


We Were Infinite

by intrepidheart



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Bullying, First Time, Homophobia, M/M, Mary Lives, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:50:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5198036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrepidheart/pseuds/intrepidheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Campbell walked into Twin Peaks Lake Summer Camp ready to keep his head down and push through the next six weeks so he could put it in his college portfolio and then get the hell out of there. </p><p>Fate, apparently, has a twisted sense of humor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When Our Heads Were Still Simple, We'd Sleep Beneath The Moon

Sam isn't normally like this. He isn't one to pull the slighted, sullen teenager act because he usually doesn’t have a reason to. Today, though, scowling down at the seat belt cutting into his shoulder in the passenger seat of his mom's Volvo, he definitely has a reason to be acting like a kid half his age.

"This is easily the worst idea you have ever had," Sam informs Mary, throwing her the most put-out look he can muster. "Really, Mom? Summer camp?"

Mary smiles gently at Sam, the sunglasses sitting on top of her head pushing waves of blonde away from her face to leave it open and kind as always.

"Honey, you're the one who came home with a note from your guidance counsellor about needing more extracurricular activities for your college portfolio. Camp is a perfect option. What else were you going to do this summer, Sammy?"

"My summer reading list," Sam points out, as if that hadn't been an obvious option. "And it's _Sam_."

Mary rolls her eyes fondly, ignoring the dull edge to his protest of his childhood nickname. Sam huffs and knocks his forehead against the glass of his window, glaring at the tall pine trees whizzing by, blurs of dark green and brown.

"Just be open to it, honey," Mary pleads after a few moments, tapping her finger on the steering wheel as she eases off the gas to take a curve in the road. "It could be fun! Give you a chance to make some friends, try new things. It'll be good for you, Sam."

Sam crosses his arms over his chest, wrinkling his nose as his calf cramps from where it's tucked in the space under the dashboard. That's what a four and a half hour drive from Lawrence to some camp on a lake bordering Kansas and Nebraska will do to you when you're eighteen, six foot two and still growing.

"I have friends, Mom," Sam mutters, his heart sinking low in his chest because, yeah, as if Mary doesn't know that most of those friends are made from bound pages and ink. He has a couple of guys he hangs out with every once in a while from class, but the extent of their discussions include comic books, Star Wars or what it's like having to buy new prescription glasses after getting punched in the face by the school bully.

Needless to say, Sam spends most of his time at the library or studying alone in his room. It all paid off because Sam has received his letter of early acceptance to Stanford, but the field of study he wants to get into is highly selective and apparently likes people who go out and participate in things. Just his luck.

"I know, sweetie," Mary concedes, reaching over to pat Sam's knee. "I just want you to try to enjoy this, okay? For me. Besides, it's only for six weeks, then you're back home with me before you go off to school in the fall."

"Got it, Mom. Have fun, make friends, try new things, don't drown in the lake."

Mary tugs Sam's left earlobe and he yelps, but she's smiling all big now, happy that he's going to at least attempt to have a good time in the nearly two months he will be away. Sam's worried about her, leaving her alone for so long. She's been trying to date again this past year, but every time she gets home from a night out, he just finds her sitting on the end of her bed, rolling a pair of wedding rings between her fingers. He doesn’t ask about Dad anymore, not after the first time he tried when he was twelve and she started sobbing into the soup she was making. He can take a hint.

It's another thirty minutes until the backroad they’ve been on for the past two hours turns into gravel and leads them past a huge sign reading _TWIN PEAKS LAKE_ , the letters painted in broad strokes of white on dark wood. Curiosity draws Sam's eyes to the windshield, watching as the line of trees on either side of the road suddenly stop to reveal a large expanse of grass so green that it is verging on unnatural. The gentle slopes of land flow down to meet the shore of the lake straight ahead of him, the surface of the water reflecting the June sun that is slowly arcing into the sky. To his right is a large, low building made from logs that has two tables stationed in front of the doors, a pair of staff in bright green shirts seated behind each. Four lines of people trail back from the tables, all kids ranging from around thirteen to Sam's age. Most seem to know each other, hugging excitedly or talking animatedly with huge hand gestures as they describe their first few weeks of summer.

Sam swallows thickly, anxiety making his fingers pull at the hem of his shirt. Getting to know new people is fine, but breaking into a group of friends who have probably been coming to this camp for years? Not Sam’s idea of a good time. He throws a panicked glance at his mom, who sends him what she probably thinks is a reassuring smile. It does nothing to calm his nerves.

Mary pulls into one of the multitude of parking spaces and they both step out into the blistering heat. The air isn’t moving and Sam kind of wants to die from how uncomfortable he already feels, his shirt plastering itself to the small of his back. He leans into the backseat and pulls out his duffle bag, shoved to the brim with changes of clothes and essentials, which means he lined the bottom of it with a layer of books he plans to spend most of his time reading. As Mary rifles through her purse, muttering to herself about registration papers that she swore she put in there, Sam steps to the front of the car and leans back against the hood, shouldering the strap of his bag.

A smattering of cabins are off to his left, equally spaced apart along the edge of the woods and all facing the lake. There is a circle of wooden stumps and benches surrounding a fire pit in front of the cabins, a couple of counsellors in their neon shirts dragging additional plastic chairs to join the rest of the seats. Traces of preparation for games and crafts litters the lawn, a pile of belts with flags attached to the middle piled near where Sam is standing, a table stacked with white shirts of multiple sizes sits near the line of campers signing in, and a bin full of soccer balls sits alone by the main lodge. The woods that followed the road they just came from sweeps in from Sam’s left and right, where it skirts behind the lodge and down the slope, an unbroken line of sentinels with the exception of the clear space of the beach and dock Sam can now see directly ahead of him.

“Sam, honey? I found the papers, let’s go get you signed in!” Mary’s voice calls from the rear of the car and Sam grimaces as he turns to meet her before she can plow her way through to the sign up tables.

“Mom, can-can you just give them to me? I’ll do it myself, it’s fine.”

Mary’s face falls, her lips turning down at the corners.

“But Sammy–”

“Mom, please,” Sam whines, his eyes roaming the parking lot as a few more cars pull in. He hasn’t missed the fact that the parents stay in the car, blow a kiss or wave through the window and turn around to leave. “There’s no adults in those lines, just kids, so can you just–”

Mary sighs a little, flapping the papers in her face like a fan as she squints over at the tables to see that he’s right.

“Can I just make like a banana and split?” Mary finishes his sentence with a tease, handing the thin stack of papers to Sam.

Sam blushes furiously, gritting his teeth as he groans out, “ _Mom_.”

“It wouldn’t be any fun if I didn’t embarrass you for at least a minute or two, honey. Come give me a hug.”

Sam complies, wrapping his arms around his mother’s shoulders because he’s just that tall now, his nose buried in the lavender scent of her hair.

“Gonna miss you,” Sam mumbles. Mary squeezes him tightly in response, her small hand patting between his shoulder blades.

“I bet I’ll miss you more,” Mary lets go and steps back, patting his cheek gently. “Now go on. And have _fun_ , Sam.”

Sam takes a few steps backwards, waving the papers in his grip as his goodbye while she crosses around the front of the car to slide into the driver’s seat. He can see her rub at her eyes for a moment and his heart dips low in his chest, the sudden urge to clamber back into the car to hug his mother again almost choking him. Then she’s pulling out and he watches the car rumble out of sight, dust kicking up behind the tires as it leaves.

It takes Sam a minute to get himself together enough to turn and join one of the lines, and another ten for him to finally step up to a staff member that is way too bubbly for a person who has to sit in scalding heat while wearing a shirt so bright it could blind someone. Sam’s going to be seeing neon green on the backs of his eyelids for the next two weeks.

“Hi there! Welcome to Twin Peaks!” The girl grins up at Sam, her shoulder length red hair catching the light of the sun to make it look copper. “Do you have you registration papers with you?”

“Um, yeah.” Sam shoves them into her waiting hand then tucks both of his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts as he eyes the big lodge. He can see through the windows now that there are long rows of tables inside, meaning that’s probably their dining hall.

“Sam Campbell,” his designated staffer says out loud, checking things here and there before flipping through her own pages that are taped to the table to highlight a box that he assumes holds his name. “Ah, you’re a newbie! Well, welcome to camp! I’m Sarah, one of the senior camp counsellors here. You’ll be seeing me around a lot.” Sarah beams up at Sam and he gives her a startled smile back. “You’re gonna be in Cabin Three with a few other boys and a male staff member. Cabin Three is…” Sarah trails off to run her finger down a separate page to find something on a list. “Josh! He’s great, you’ll really like him. You can go drop your stuff off in your cabin. Bunk choice is first come, first serve, but personally–” Sarah leans forward and gestures at Sam to bend down. He hesitates but shifts forward to get his ear closer to the hand she has cupped around her mouth. “–I recommend you try to get one of the top bunks. Just between you and me.”

“Uh," Sam straightens and scratches the back of his head. What the hell is that supposed to mean? “Okay, will do. Thanks, I guess.”

Sarah continues on to explain the basic rules of the camp. Cabins are not co-ed, lights out at 10pm sharp and no sneaking out or you’ll risk getting sent home. The only people allowed to be out after curfew are the members of staff who have switching shifts of nightly rounds. Entering other cabins after curfew is strictly prohibited. Meals are at the same times every day, and the schedule and food options are posted by the front door of the dining hall behind them each morning. Participation for most activities is mandatory but Sarah promises that everything they do is fun. Sam tries his best to believe her. At least once or twice during the six week session, both campers and staff take a field trip that isn’t mandatory but is highly encouraged, even though some people choose to stay behind.

After her speech, Sarah points Sam in the direction of his cabin and waves enthusiastically as he turns away. Switching his bag from the shoulder that is now numb to the other, Sam trudges through the lawn, his worn out sneakers squeaking in the dew still clinging to the blades of grass below him. The other campers are trailing in and out of the cabins he’s headed towards before making their way to the dining hall, which he’s guessing is where they’re going to make their general announcements. Sam shoves a hand into the sweat dampened locks of his hair to push his bangs back, hoping that they have air conditioning in there.

Climbing the three steps that lead to the front door of his cabin, Sam nudges it open to be assaulted by the smell of feet and a chorus of cheers that quickly die off into laughter.

“Well, hey there!” A guy a few years older than Sam yells, hopping down from one of the top bunks to spread his arms wide. “Looks like we got the other newbie, boys!”

Sam pauses in the wide doorway, taking in the scene before him. There are three bunk beds, one to his left and right and the third on the back wall of the cabin straight ahead of him. The guy who just spoke is standing in the space between the first two beds, grinning and wearing a green shirt. He must be Josh. For some reason, Sam kind of wants to punch him in the face. Sam quickly counts four other guys lounging on their respective bunks, which have their bags and other items strewn across the mattress of their choosing. Of course, the only one free is in the bunk to Sam’s right. On the bottom. Sam wonders if he should just sleep outside.

“What, are you mute or something?” Josh asks, stepping forward to poke at Sam’s shoulder.

Sam frowns and swipes Josh’s hand away before adjusting the strap of his bag. “No, I’m not mute.”

“Are you gonna tell us your name?”

“Sam.”

Josh chuckles, turning to look over his shoulder at the guys who are now starting to stand up from their beds. “We got a real talkative one here.”

Those benches around the fire pit are starting to look awful friendly.

“C’mon, get in here, you’re letting all the cool air out.” Josh stands aside to jerk his thumb towards the center of the cabin. Sam steps forward and lets Josh close the door behind him, tossing his bag down on the bed at his side.

“Hey, I’m Tom!” A younger kid with dark curls, maybe fifteen, peeks over the edge of the bunk on top of Sam’s to fix him with huge blue eyes, sticking his hand out.

“Hey,” Sam offers back, shaking Tom’s hand quickly.

The rest of the boys go around saying their names: Sean, who is blonde and so buff that he could probably break Sam’s neck between two of his fingers; Dominic, easily the youngest in the cabin at thirteen with big glasses and apparently the only other new kid at the camp besides Sam; and Charlie, who seems friendly enough with how he waves at Sam from his bed.

“Welcome to Cabin Three, your new family for the next six weeks!” Josh proclaims as he waltzes over to his bunk to pull a baseball cap out of his bag. He spins it around on his head so it’s holding back the serious flow of blonde that nearly brushes his shoulders. “We’re all gonna be braiding each other’s hair by the end of this session, you just wait.”

“Perfect,” Sam drawls, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts again. “I love having my hair braided. That’s exactly what I came to camp for.”

Josh lets out a huge laugh as he moves to the front door.

“You’re gonna do just fine here, kid. Now move it, it’s lunchtime and I’m fuckin’ starved.”

They all trail out after Josh, who leads the way to the dining hall by cutting through the middle of the lawn. As they walk, he explains that everyone usually is up by 8:30 each morning to eat and get started on camp activities and that there’s a good amount of leisure time where people swim or kayak around the lake or just stay indoors and do artsy crap.

The dining hall is air conditioned and Sam’s about to cry from relief. There are three long tables that all stretch towards a buffet-type set up, an array of food scents assaulting Sam's nose. The seats around him are starting to fill up, but now that Sam has time to really look, he sees there’s barely forty kids in total, including the counsellors.

Cabin Three all sit down together near the front of the middle table and Josh grudgingly tells them they have to wait for the opening speech before any of them can eat. The director of the camp gets up and stands at the front of the room and Josh nudges Sean to shut him up.

“I’m gonna keep this real short, 'cause I know y’all are probably hungry and I hate doing this kinda crap.”

Sam’s eyebrows get lost in his hair from how high up they shoot on his forehead, but apparently this is the guy's normal behavior because most of the campers start laughing so Sam just sits back in his chair to listen.

“Most of you know me, but just ‘cause it’s my job, I’ll go ahead and tell you anyways. I’m Bobby Singer, camp director here at Twin Peaks. We got a real good summer planned for you here, so as long as you all take care to listen to me and the rest of your staff, we’re gonna have a nice time. You need help or have any questions, you can ask any one of these guys in the green shirts. I’ll let them introduce themselves, because God knows they got working mouths of their own.” At this point, Bobby tugs at the bill of his baseball cap and takes his seat again.

“Encore, Bobby, that was beautiful!” A voice calls from Sam’s right. Sam twists his head over his shoulder to see a guy in a green shirt stand up from the chair directly behind him and start to slow clap.

“Dean, you’re just _askin’_ to get bathroom duty for the next two weeks.” Bobby says gruffly, but all Dean does is laugh.

Sam pushes back his chair to give himself room enough to tuck one leg underneath him before turning so he can better look up at the guy running his hand through his hair with a stupid grin on his face.

There's something about the way Dean moves that makes Sam’s entire body jolt, like he’s just been hit with electricity. It’s unsettling and thrilling and so foreign that Sam can’t do anything but sit there and stare. He’s barely paying attention to the fact that Dean is introducing himself, unable to stop himself from focusing on the brush of freckles across Dean’s nose and cheeks, on how the hideous color of his staff shirt somehow compliments the green of his eyes, on the black cord that loops around the back of his neck before disappearing beneath his collar, on the confident smile that never stops pulling at the edge of his lips.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam can see Josh stand up to start introducing himself once Dean has finished, and Sam really should turn around now because Dean’s sitting down and Sam doesn't think he's blinked in a full minute. Then their eyes meet and Sam can’t breathe anymore, his lungs just shutting down like they don’t have some kind of important job to do.

“Newbie, huh?” Dean asks as he settles into his chair, hands knitting over his stomach as he holds Sam’s gaze and leans back. Their shoulders are close to touching, something that Sam shouldn’t be aware of, but he is. He really is.

“God, what is with the ‘newbie’ crap? Has everyone been coming here since birth or something?” Sam hears his mouth saying before he clamps it shut with wide eyes because, _Jesus_ , he sounds like a brat, why did he just say that, now Dean probably thinks he’s a dick, great, this is just _great_.

Dean snorts and looks away as he briefly rubs his forefinger under his nose, his mouth working to stay in a controlled smile. Sam's stomach has become a mosh pit for butterflies. Okay. He laughed. Maybe this isn’t totally going down the drain.

"Yeah, something like that," Dean offers, meeting Sam's stare once more. Sam watches Dean's eyes jump around as they trace over his face, and he feels his cheeks and neck start to burn from the blush now heating his skin. Shrivelling up into a raisin would be preferable to having to watch Dean watch Sam turn into a literal tomato, but nothing changes in Dean's eyes despite Sam's obvious embarrassment at being the object of his scrutiny. Sam would know because he hasn't been able to break his gaze from Dean for the past five minutes.

"Most of us have been coming here since we were twelve or thirteen, so we’re not used to having too many new campers," Dean continues casually, pulling at the _W_ in _TWIN PEAKS LAKE_ that is ironed on the front of his counsellor shirt. "I've been around here since I was a kid, though. Bobby's a friend of the family, so I came with him every summer to get out of my dad's hair. You know how it is."

"I don't, actually," Sam says bluntly, no idea where the sudden interest in telling his life story is coming from, but apparently it's coming out all the same. "My dad left me and my mom when I was a baby."

That earns him a pair of raised eyebrows and a beat or two of silence before Dean opens his mouth to respond.

"Hey! Winchester! Am I boring you and the newbie?"

Sam blinks himself out of his stupor to follow the voice that called them out, finding that it belongs to a tall guy standing up near the middle of his table. Sam feels the warm wave of breath from Dean chuckling near his ear, suddenly hyper-aware that they both still have their chairs pushed near each other and are the only two people talking outside of the staff.

"Yeah, Parker, ‘cause we’re already aware that you think you're God's gift to Earth."

“That’s rich, coming from you.” The guy, Parker, grins at Dean as he crosses his arms over his broad chest. He looks like he could be a football player, built enough to make it obvious he has strength on his side and chiseled features that are soft now but would be seriously scary if he got pissed. He has long hair, similar to Josh’s except his is chestnut instead of blonde, also held back by a backwards snapback.

“Well you have our attention now, Park. Please, continue to enlighten us with your riveting life story.” Dean’s tone is teasing. Sam gets the feeling that the two are good enough friends that this kind of banter is normal. What a weird fucking camp.

Sam feels a nudge at the top of his arm, looking away from Parker to find Dean’s elbow as the source. Meeting his eyes, Sam feels his throat close up when an easy smile breaks across Dean’s face.

“Catch you around, kid,” Dean stage-whispers before moving his chair back to his table.

Sam sits there, dazed for a moment, before scooching forward to lean on his forearms, staring at the smooth tabletop in front of him instead of the next staff member who is saying their name. He’s still trying to swallow, his heart beating a painful tattoo on his ribcage as he tries desperately to sort out just what the hell is going on with him.

Sam doesn’t like guys. He can appreciate those of the male species who are in the more gifted area of physical beauty as much as the next person, but he’s never been _attracted_ to them. Then again, Sam isn’t sure if he can constitute the emotional tidal wave that just punched him in the face as only admiring how good looking, verging on _pretty_ , Dean is. It’s more than that, like some kind of comfortable weight has settled into the pit of Sam’s stomach to keep him anchored to the ground, a connection to something greater that he hadn’t even known he was missing. It’s terrifying.

A sudden bustle of movement draws Sam out of his head, the sound of forty chairs screeching back against the wood floor making him jerk to stand up too. Everyone starts to get their food, a dull roar of conversation bursting forth now that everyone can speak freely. Sam goes through the motions, not even paying attention to what he puts on his plate until he’s seated again. The three leaves of spinach that are supposed to be his salad are just pathetic and he finds that he grabbed both an egg salad sandwich and a tuna salad sandwich, neither of which he actually likes. Overall, a great start to his morning.

The rest of the day is a blur of unpacking, icebreakers and trust exercises to get everyone acquainted with one another. Sam ends up sticking with Charlie, one of the guys from his cabin, through most of it all, both of them gravitating towards each other in their similar tendency to be introverted. They are comfortable in each other’s silences and Sam kind of takes it upon himself to say something funny now and again to get Charlie to loosen up and laugh. Lunch and dinner are both good enough, the dining hall loud and cheerful with raised voices and the clatter of silverware against plates. Sam leaves dinner with a smile on his face. That may be from the multiple times he caught Dean staring at him from the next table over.

A campfire rounds off the first day of camp, everyone sitting on the grass, the chairs or the log benches surrounding the fire pit. It’s mainly just chatter and laughing until Dean steps out of his cabin with a guitar in hand and Parker starts imitating a cluster of girls who begin swooning. Dean tells Parker exactly where he can shove it and takes his seat, propping the guitar on his thigh as he strums the instrument to get it in tune.

Sam is almost directly across from him in the circle, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees while the fingers of one hand idly play with his bottom lip. He can feel the heat of the crackling flames on his face and his legs through denim, the wood snapping in the pit as it settles in to become embers and ashes, another memory littering the ground to be blown away by the evening wind.  

Dean’s finally got the guitar ready and soon enough, an upbeat melody of notes rises above the voices of those who are still talking before they quickly hush. Sam smiles widely despite his bottom lip being pinched between his thumb and forefinger, releasing it to sit up and rub his palms on his jeans.

“Where it began,” Dean starts singing, his voice low and smooth in Sam’s ears. Goosebumps riddle his arms and Sam finds himself shifting forward to get closer to the fire. “I can’t begin to knowin’, but then I know it’s growing strong.”

“Was in the spring!” Josh’s voice to Sam’s right jumps in to join Dean’s and Sam gets that feeling of wanting to punch him in the face again, because Dean is singing, shut the hell up. “Then spring became summer. Who would’ve believed you’d come along?”

“Haaaaands,” Parker stands up and walks over to the girl next to Dean before dropping to his knees and grabbing one of her hands in both of his. “Touchin’ haaaands!” She’s laughing and Dean is shaking his head, a smile pulling up at his lips as he continues to sing along. “Reaching out, touching me, touching yooooou!”

The entire camp joins in for the chorus, shouting “Sweet Carolineee!” and Sam finds his voice mixed in with them all, his face hurting from how big he’s grinning. Dean strums the guitar sharply three times and Parker shouts “Ba ba baaa!” before cracking up and slapping Dean’s back. Sam rocks himself gently from side to side as the song continues, his eyes captured by the glow of the fire on the angles of Dean’s cheekbones and nose, how he starts laughing every time Parker does something stupid to match the lyrics. It makes Sam’s throat close up and he can’t sing anymore, so he just watches, soaks it in. Soaks Dean in. Tries not to feel guilty about it, especially when Dean meets and holds his eye from across the circle.

It ends too soon, but another song follows it, and another, and another until the moon is nearing the top of the sky and Bobby starts grumbling about breaking curfew on the first night and everyone groans. People start filing off to their cabins in clusters and Sam stands up, wincing when he realizes his left foot is asleep. He shifts his weight onto one leg and starts shaking out the other to get the feeling back when he feels someone nudge his arm. Steadying himself, Sam turns to find Dean at his elbow, the guitar hanging off a strap on his shoulder.

“Hey.”

It takes Sam way too long to clear his throat enough to reply. “Hey.”

“It’s Sam, right?”

“Yeah.” Sam hopes he imagined his voice cracking at the end there.

Dean sways back and forth a little on the balls of his feet, his eyes roaming the dispersing crowd of people around them, his teeth worrying the corner of his mouth.

“Um,” Sam says. “Are you oka–”

“Did you get a top bunk?” Dean interrupts, finally meeting Sam’s eyes now that they’re practically alone by the dying fire. Sam can’t help it when his eyebrow raises as he tries to hold Dean’s intense gaze, shivers crawling down the curve of his spine.

“What?”

Dean shifts back onto his heels and sighs at Sam like he’s being difficult, which is stupid because, what the _hell_ , Dean just asked the most random question on Earth, why does it matter?

“Did you get a top bunk?” Dean says again with an edge of irritation. Sam presses his mouth into a thin line and shoves his hands in his pockets, snorting softly.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have great conversation starters? I mean, it’s really riveting stuff.”

Dean punches the top of Sam’s arm not-so-lightly and he hisses, clasping a palm to the spot that is probably going to bruise.

“You gonna answer me?”

“No, I didn’t, Jesus,” Sam mumbles, frowning at Dean. “Why is everyone so obsessed with top bunks? Are they water beds or something? Come with gold plated sheets?”

Dean huffs and starts to walk towards his cabin. At first, Sam thinks he got fed up with the conversation, but then he sees Dean turn and give him a _look,_ and he realizes that Dean expected him to follow. Smashing his shin off of one of the log benches in his scramble, Sam quickly catches up to Dean and falls into step with him, an enormous lump in his throat. Glancing at Dean out of the corner of his eye, Sam notices that Dean is shorter than him, and for whatever reason, that makes his heart climb up high in his chest. He tries to hide his smile by ducking his head.

“No,” Dean answers him after a moment, the sound of cabin doors banging shut behind campers thudding through the air, helping keep Sam grounded in reality and not drifting away like he wants to when he feels their shoulders brush. “Not water beds. Just…ideal. Definitely ideal.”

As if that clears anything up.

“Ooookay then.” Sam blows out a sigh. They’ve come to a halt, Sam blinking as he realizes that his cabin steps are right in front of him. With a jolt, he realizes that Dean basically just walked him to his cabin door. He’s glad for the cover of darkness, because the heat he feels flooding his cheeks would be mortifying if it were light out.

“Look, uh,” Dean’s voice is low enough that Sam has to lean forward a bit to catch the words. “Just don’t fall asleep tonight. If you can help it.”

Sam blinks at him.

“Don’t fall asleep?” Sam repeats, enunciating each word very slowly to convey just how stupid he thinks that request is.

Dean’s forehead crinkles as he frowns, eyebrows drawing together in mild irritation. “You’ve really got that whole condescending thing down pat, don’tcha?” he says dryly. Man, if looks could kill.

“Well you sure know how to bring it out of a guy,” Sam replies, the banter flowing out of him almost too easily, like he’s known Dean for years and not a matter of hours.

Dean stares at Sam silently for a moment, his eyes moving over Sam’s face in the dull light of the moon. Sam suddenly feels like he’s failing a test he didn’t even know he was taking, his heart thudding loud in his ears, and he gets the need to backpedal, backpedal fast.

“Okay. Don’t fall asleep,” Sam turns and looks at the door of his cabin as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other before glancing back at Dean. “Any more pearls of wisdom?”

Dean takes this opportunity to start walking backwards, his smile barely visible in the dark as he retreats farther from Sam.

“Yeah,” Dean’s voice carries low but Sam can still catch it, the words leaving his skin feeling a little too tight across his bones. “Thank me later.” Then he’s opening the door to Cabin Two and shutting it definitively behind him.

Sam takes a deep breath and climbs the steps to his own cabin. Once he’s inside, he finds most of the boys talking quietly and laughing, all in their respective bunks. Sam grabs his bag and changes into his sleep shirt, stripping off his jeans to leave him in his boxers.

“You might get a little chilly there, Sammy. You should throw some sweatpants on!” Josh calls down from his bed, something teasing underlying his words.

Sam waves his words away and slides under the sheets on his thick inflatable mattress, too tired to tell him off. He can hear Josh say something else but he turns over and buries his face in the scratchy pillowcase, his eyes trained on the wood panelling the wall that his bunk is shoved against. Don’t fall asleep, huh? Sam sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and gnaws on it as he shifts himself into a position that makes his shoulder twinge. He stays there, knowing he won’t doze off if he’s in some form of discomfort. Despite the distraction of the other boys talking in hushed tones, Sam follows the twists and curls of the grain in the wood in front of his face with his eyes, finding something easy in the flow of it all.

The next thing Sam becomes aware of is a gentle swaying under his body and the fact that his eyes are shut. Still hazy from the sleep that had apparently overtaken him, Sam sucks in a breath through his nose as he stretches his arms outwards. The air entering his lungs is too cold and too fresh to belong to a space housing six teenage boys, alarm sparking through Sam fast enough to make him sit upright, eyes flying open. This makes his world jerk beneath him dangerously and he plants his hands at his sides, stilling enough to get his bearings and figure out just what the hell is going on. When he manages to blink the sleep from his eyes, his stomach drops because he’s on the lake.

He is floating on his mattress in the middle of the fucking lake.

Sam closes his eyes again and takes several deep breaths, feeling the warmth of the morning sun on the top of his head and the rock of the little waves moving his bed. Sam struggles to choose between laughing and swearing. Neither are going to help his situation so he opens his eyes once more and takes in the situation. He still has the sheets on his mattress, which means that whoever shoved him out here had literally just lifted his entire bed and carried him out of the cabin. How they managed to do that without waking him up is beyond his reasoning capability at the moment.

Looking around, he sees that he’s probably fifty feet or so from the dock where he can now clearly see a gathering of other campers, most of whom are doubled over in their laughter. Taking a deep breath to smother his annoyance, Sam sees he isn’t the only one out here, which makes it a little better because he knows it wasn’t just targeted to him. Dominic, the other new kid in his cabin, is floating about ten feet away and Sam can hear his sniffling. He can feel his heart twist. Poor kid.

“Hey! Dominic!” he calls, gingerly moving so he can turn and face the younger boy. His mattress dips down dangerously when he presses his knee in too hard and he grimaces. Dominic looks up, the heels of his hands swiping at the tears on his cheeks. “Hey, why don’t you try to paddle to shore, huh? Can you do that?”

“Um. I c-I can try!” Dominic’s thick voice warbles to Sam’s ears.

“Good plan, buddy. Let’s make it a race. You up for that?”

The sound of Dominic’s choked laughter makes the corner of Sam’s mouth turn up, but after a few moments it’s obvious that there’s no way Dominic can get back to shore on his own, his attempts ending up with him just turning his bed in circles since he can only reach over one side of his mattress.

Sam sits back and rubs his eyes harshly enough for spots flicker across his vision before sighing, wrestling off his shirt toss it to the end of his own bed, and launching himself into the water. He breaks the surface with a gasp, shit, it’s _cold_ , and he can’t stop the shivers from wracking his frame as he tries to tell his muscles to start treading. It takes a moment but he manages to get himself together enough to front crawl his way over to Dominic, who has started crying again.

“H-hey man,” Sam says through chattering teeth as he stops at the edge of the bed. “You g-gonna help me move this thing or w-what?”

Dominic nods really fast, his glasses slipping down his nose with the force of it.

“Okay, g-get on the other side of the mattress–gently, gently!” Sam hisses when Dominic’s movements are too sharp and jostle the bed into dipping dangerously from side to side. “Start p-paddling over there, I’ve got it here.”

Sam gets the best grip he can on the wet sheets covering the inflated bed and starts kicking and using his other arm to propel them towards the shore. He hears cheers rise from the docks and ignores them, too cold and pissed off to do anything other than focus on getting this kid on dry land. It takes at least ten minutes, but in that time, his body adjusts to the temperature and his teeth quit clacking together. Sam just about cries from relief when he finally feels smooth rocks under his feet. He stands and grabs the front of the mattress, walking backwards and dragging it up onto the sand as far as he can before letting it drop. His boxers are sticking to him like a second skin and it's really fucking uncomfortable and this is probably _the_ worst way to start his second day here.

There are girls and boys around him now, slapping his shoulders and back, cheering and giggling and cajoling, but he just keeps his eyes on Dominic, who is shakily climbing off the bed. Sam brushes off the hands to move towards him, kneeling down to get closer to the eye level of the young boy.

“You okay?” Sam asks gently.

Dominic nods, his eyes tearing up again before he throws his arms around Sam’s neck. “Thanks, Sam.”

“Hey, I’m gonna get you all wet.”

Dominic extricates himself and wipes his nose with the back of his hand before shrugging. “‘S okay.”

Sam smiles and pushes off his knees to stand up straight again. The air is cold on his skin, goosebumps littering his arms and chest and he starts shivering again despite the sunlight. Lifting a shaking hand to push back the drenched strands of hair in his eyes, Sam scans the crowd around him with narrowed eyes.

“Any of you gonna help him get his bed back into his cabin?”

Everyone kind of stands there and stares back at him like he just spoke Chinese. With a roll of his eyes, Sam pushes his way between two girls and starts to slosh his way back into the water to go get his own bed that has now drifted even farther out into the middle of the lake. Great.

“C’mon, newbie, it’s a joke! Lighten up!” someone calls from behind Sam. Pausing, he turns to see Parker standing there with his hands held up like _what can you do?_

“Oh, yeah. This was really funny. Hilarious. I’m cracking ribs over here, that’s how funny this is.” Sam snaps back before shaking his head and continuing to fight through the waves lapping into the shore. He’s far enough in that he has to start swimming when he hears someone call his name, but at that point he doesn’t have the energy to care, so he shoves his face down into the water and starts his front crawl back in the direction of his mattress, turning up to suck in air every three strokes.

He nearly chokes and dies when he feels a hand wrap around his ankle and tug, his body flailing to get free. Spitting water out of his mouth when he finally gets away, Sam palms his face, his vision clearing enough to see a sopping wet Dean glaring at him.

“Are you _trying_ to drown me?” Sam coughs.

“Are you _trying_ to be a pain in my ass?” Dean grumbles back, and Sam can’t help but watch a drop of water slide down his nose and dangle from the tip. “You nearly kicked me in the face.”

“Serves you right,” Sam rasps, trying to stay afloat. Anger and irritation get the best of his tongue, making his words sharp. “What are you even doing here, Dean? Got tired of watching from the peanut gallery?”

Dean makes a face at him and starts to breaststroke his way towards Sam’s bed, which tugs Sam’s muscles into movement, the need to cut Dean off in his path to the mattress overpowering his need to understand exactly why he is doing it.

“I’ve got this. I don’t need your help.”

“You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, ain’tcha?” Dean says, lifting a dripping hand to shove Sam to the side. “I’m a counsellor, Sam, I’m supposed to help.”

Sam huffs and throws himself forward into the water ahead of Dean, managing to get his hands on the bed before Dean can reach it. Reaching across the mattress as far as he can, Sam fists his fingers in his sheets and kicks hard, launching himself up onto his improvised raft. He can feel the thin fabric of the sheets soaking through with the water on his body but he decides he doesn’t give a shit and shimmies onto it enough to be able to turn onto his back and splay out his arms, his chest heaving from the exertion of swimming to and from shore.

“Seriously?” Dean’s voice floats up over the lip of the mattress by Sam’s feet and he can feel the bed pull down a little from where Dean anchors his hand to take a break from treading. “You’re just gonna stay out here?”

“Well, it _is_ a beautiful morning,” Sam drawls, closing his eyes against the sun, unconsciously twitching as he feels the tickle of water streaming down his sides.

Everything is silent for a moment, and Sam can hear water lapping and the soft puffs of Dean breathing. Then Sam feels the rush of water over his shins as his legs dip down in the water from Dean planting both hands on the lip of the bed and using his entire body weight to flip the mattress up and dump Sam into the lake. Dean swears loudly when he doesn’t release the bed fast enough and it teeters before completely flopping over on top of their heads. It’s not particularly fun to get a mouthful of lake, but Sam manages to have enough sense to shove his way out from the weight keeping him under. Surfacing with a series of coughs to get water out of the place that air should be, Sam hangs off the side of his now completely soaked mattress.

Opening his eyes again, Sam finds Dean doing the same thing, close enough that their knees are knocking together with the soft sway of waves from the disturbed lake. Rattling breaths into his lungs, Sam meets Dean’s stare and he’s caught again, the sunlight filtering down from above to make Dean’s eyes look almost clear, like seaglass, and he feels his body go numb. Dean seems to be frozen too, his lips parted slightly now that he has his breath back, droplets of water sliding from his hair down the line of his jaw. Something fizzes in the small space of air between them and Sam can nearly taste it, his grip on the bed tightening at the rush of heat thrumming under his skin.

Then the moment is broken, shattering in Sam's ears with Dean clearing his throat and looking away. Sam swallows thickly and turns to face the bed, dunking under to kick hard and try to flip the bed right-side-up again to no avail. Cussing a little harder than normal when he surfaces, Sam decides to concentrate on retrieving the pillow that is now trying to float away, tossing it on top of the bed that Dean is holding steady before diving down to get the bunched up ball of sheets that had started to sink. Throwing the sopping wet heap next to the pillow, Sam ignores Dean and starts to push the bed back to shore, kicking his legs like he's using a flutterboard. And if Dean decides to silently catch up and do the same thing, then, well.

Bobby is standing at the end of the dock by the time they reach the shore, arms crossed and face stormy underneath his baseball cap.

"You okay, there, kid?" The man calls out as he follows them to the beach, meeting them when they finish dragging the bed up on the sand.

“Fine, sir,” Sam says back a little sullenly as he shoves his hair back with both hands. He finds Parker standing just off to the side of his vision, a warning in the sharp cut of his eyes, and it’s suddenly very clear who the mastermind was behind this whole thing. Sam clenches his jaw, grinding his back teeth. “Just out for a morning swim.”

Bobby scrutinizes the mess of Sam’s bed before raising his eyebrows at Dean.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Dean lifts his hands innocently. “This wasn’t my doing for once.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” Bobby taps his finger on his arm before turning and barking orders at two girl counsellors whose names Sam didn’t catch at breakfast yesterday and Parker to help Dean get Sam’s bed propped up on the side of the cabin to dry off. It’s only after they’ve carried it away that Sam realizes his shirt was on it and he’s standing on the shore looking like a drowned rat.

“Hey! Sam, right?” Sarah, the girl from yesterday who signed him in, is suddenly at his side with a towel and a set of clothes, smiling brightly. “I figured you may want to get changed. Hope you don’t mind that I went through your stuff.”

A random chick digging around in his personal belongings? Sounds like his idea of a great time. But instead of saying something stupid, he just thanks her and takes the pile off her hands, because she really is trying to help. Sarah leads him to the main bathroom attached to the dining hall and he changes in one of the three shower stalls.

He's towelling off his hair when he steps out of the bathroom and bumps into someone so hard that he nearly falls on his ass. Stumbling but managing to staying upright, Sam pulls the towel away and finds Parker in his path with his arms crossed and chest puffed out, a dark edge to his eyes. Sam raises his eyebrows and straightens to his full height, a smug smile working its way onto his face when he finds Parker at least three inches shorter than he is.

“Can I help you with something?” Sam asks coolly, throwing his towel over his shoulder. Something tells him that this won’t be over in a quick minute.

“You can start by wiping that stupid smirk off your face,” Parker snaps. Sam makes an effort to smile even wider, just to piss him off. Apparently it works. “I don’t like you, Campbell. I’m just gonna say that right off the bat.”

“Well I’m really glad you cleared that up for me, because I didn’t have a clue. Thanks for that.” The amount of snark dripping from Sam’s words surprises even him, but he can’t seem to find it in himself to back down from this douchebag.

“Listen,” Parker hisses through bared teeth, his fingers now reaching forward to curl slowly around the ring of fabric making up Sam’s collar. Sam forces himself to stand very still and look down his nose at Parker, refusing to flinch. “You think you’re funny ‘cause you’re a smart ass?”

“I don’t know. Do you think you’re any less of a lowlife for picking on kids you’re supposed to be counselling?”

At that moment, something flashes across Parker’s face that makes Sam is certain he’s about to get a black eye, but then he hears a shout and Parker is ripped off of him in one strong jerk. Sam cusses when Parker doesn’t release his shirt collar right away and it cuts deeply into the back of his neck.

“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” Dean, of _course_ it’s Dean, why is it always him, is planting his palms on Parker’s chest and shoving him backwards. When Parker starts to point at Sam and opens his mouth to say something, Dean shoves him again. “No, shut up. Go walk it off, Park, I’m serious.”

Parker whirls around and stalks off, slamming his closed fist into the side of the building as he turns the corner with one last glare sent Sam’s way that leaves a cold chill deep in his chest. Sam shifts his eyes from the place where Parker disappeared to Dean, his brows furrowing when Dean meets his stare.

“I was handling that.”

Dean scoffs in disbelief. “A ‘thank you’ wouldn’t kill you, man.”

“For what?” Sam laughs shortly. “Now he’s gonna want to beat the shit out of me even more ‘cause you stepped in for me.”

The look on Dean’s face is unsettling, edging towards genuine worry and concern. Sam doesn’t understand, doesn’t think he will ever understand, the reason why that makes goosebumps rise on his arms and his breath stutter in his lungs.

“I’ll take care of him.”

“That’s the whole point, Dean!” Sam shoves a hand in his hair and runs his fingers through it exasperatedly, tugging like he does when he gets worked up. “You shouldn’t have to! How is he even a staff member here when he’s doing this kind of crap?”

Dean's face that was open just a moment ago shutters down into a cool, blank expression, the green of his eyes turning hard as he stares at Sam evenly.

"Don't talk about shit you don't understand, kid."

"Christ, I'm not a kid!" Sam scoffs, throwing his hands up in the air as he tries to ignore just how childish that makes him seem. "I can handle myself and I sure as hell don't need you stepping in on situations that have nothing to do with you!"

"You know what?" Dean's jaw clenched visible, the muscles in his throat standing out in sharp relief as he steps into Sam's space, eyes wide and shiny and completely chilling. "Just by saying that, you're proving that you _are_ just a kid. And I'm your camp counsellor, so as your direct superior, you're gonna listen when I tell you to get your ass in that dining hall, sit down, and have some fucking breakfast. We clear on that, _kid_?"

Sam seriously debates crossing his arms and glaring at Dean until he gives up and walks away, because Sam really is just _that_ stubborn, but he settles for shoulder-checking his _direct superior_ on his way to the main dining hall door instead. Most everyone is seated and nearly done their breakfast by the time Sam gets something on his plate and basically throws it on the table next to Charlie.

"Good morning to you too," Charlie says around a mouthful of sausage. "Seems like you've had an eventful day and it's not even nine."

"Not now, Charlie, okay?" Sam grumbles as he skewers some scrambled eggs onto his fork and shoves them in his mouth, one of the tines scraping hard on the roof of his mouth so that he tastes copper.

"Okay," the other boy shrugs, sipping from his orange juice and falling silent at Sam’s side.

Everyone slowly starts filtering out of the hall in the next fifteen minutes, many of them throwing some kind of look at Sam as they pass him. He hunches lower over his plate and slides pieces of cantaloupe around his plate to avoid meeting any eyes. Charlie stays next to him until Sam voices his need to get out of there, both of them standing and putting their plates in the plastic bin designated for dirty dishes.

Once they walk out into the muggy heat of the morning, Sam shades his eyes and scans the field in front of them to find Josh and the rest of their cabin waving at them from next to a pile of multicolored belts for capture the flag. With a nudge to Charlie’s side, they both start across the still damp grass, quiet as they walk.

"You know," Charlie pipes up out of nowhere. "They do this every year. The pranks."

"Thanks for the warning, then." Sam kicks at a clump of dirt, watches it tumble and spray wet clumps a few feet away.

"Relax.” Charlie elbows Sam’s side and shrugs. “It’s not the same every time. The last time they did this was two years ago and the only people who know what the prank are gonna be are the ones who do it each year. The rest of us just get to guess what’s coming.”

“The staff?” Sam grunts, throwing a sidelong glare at Parker, who is leading his group down a path that curves around the back of the dining hall towards a low building he hadn’t seen before.

“Some of ‘em don’t participate. The girls usually don’t.”

Sam mulls over Charlie’s words as they join the rest of their cabin. Josh claps a hand on Sam’s shoulder and apologizes, since apparently he had been the other guy to help Parker lug Sam’s dead-to-the-world body down to the shore and launched him into the lake. Sam lets his shoulders rise and fall in short jerks because that’s the best he can manage at this point.

He finds Dominic staring at him from beside the pile of belts. They both smile at each other and for the rest of the day, Dominic becomes his shadow. Even during the capture the flag game they play against Cabin Four, Dominic is always on Sam’s heels. He sits next to Sam at lunch, tags along with Sam and Charlie when they go to the table where everyone is able to decorate their own camp shirt with paint, and joins Sam and some of the other guys from other cabins to go chop wood for the fire that evening. The kid can barely lift an axe so Sam gently suggests that Dominic be the one to run the chopped pieces over to the main woodpile, which he is all too happy to do.

Sam doesn’t see Dean for more than a minute or two in passing over the next few days. He also finds himself becoming more and more irritated at small things that happen, snapping at people or sulking in his food at mealtime. He really hopes the two aren’t correlated because if they are, then Sam is in a deeper hole than he could ever imagine.

In other news, Parker hasn’t come within twenty feet of Sam since day two, except for in dining hall. Even then, Sam can feel the daggers piercing the back of his head from wherever Parker chooses to sit. Sam doesn’t have to take a guess at who would have anything to do with that.

It’s Friday evening when things change. Bobby had announced at dinner that they were all, as a group, going to do a big bonfire and promised things like ghost stories and more sing-a-longs that made Sam roll his eyes. So after the meal, while everyone piled out of the dining hall and gathered blankets and flashlights from their rooms to bring to the fire pit, Sam lagged behind, rifling through his bag longer than necessary until the cabin was nearly empty. Dominic hovered, waiting, so Sam promised that he’d be out shortly to get him to leave. He waited until the door shut fully before letting himself fall onto his mattress with a huff, fingers pawing through the pages of one of the books that he’d brought along. His mattress had dried out, thank God, but some nights he thinks he can still smell lakewater.

It’s about twenty minutes later when the door flies open, making Sam jump. He props himself up on his elbows, readying a stream of excuses in case it’s Josh or Bobby, but his words clog in his throat when he sees it’s Dean, darting in and closing the door gently behind him.

“What–”

“You too, huh?” Dean says, as if it’s completely normal for him to just walk right in here, easy as you please. He eyes the novel in Sam’s hands, a smirk pulling up the edge of his mouth. “Should’ve known you’d be a nerd.”

“Hey!” Sam flushes, snapping the book shut.

“Relax, Sammy. All in good fun.”

“Don’t call me Sammy,” Sam grumbles, putting the book down on the bedspread before scooching forward so his feet are flat on the floor. “What are you even doing in here?”

“Needed a hideout for a minute,” Dean shrugs, but the slightly anxious look he throws to the door at his back says otherwise.

“And what exactly are you hiding from?” Sam snorts, standing just as he hears faint tittering that undoubtedly belong to Dean’s little fanclub pass by. Judging by the way Dean skirts away from the sounds, he’s been trying to avoid them for some time. Ah. Not what – _who_. Sam can’t help the mischievous smile that pulls at his cheeks, adrenaline spiking through his veins as he pads forward to stand by the door. Dean is watching his movements cautiously from his place against the wall, eyebrows twitching down as he tries to figure out what Sam’s playing at.

Letting his smile grow bigger, Sam reaches for the handle, meets Dean’s now comically wide eyes, and begins to open the door as he sing-songs, “ _Ladies_ –”

Dean’s palm slaps the wood near his cheek, effectively slamming it shut as he crowds into Sam’s space, murderous intent leeching from the glare he’s leveling at Sam. A laugh starts to rise in Sam’s throat along something to tease Dean about having camp groupies and how sad it is that someone like him has resorted to hiding away in a cabin that isn't even his, but the feeling of Dean’s breaths tickling his mouth makes all of it curl up and die before it can reach his tongue.

Every single one of his thoughts have completely left the building because Dean’s chest is rising and falling millimeters from his own and he can feel Dean’s thigh brushing a hot line on the outside of his leg, so really, how could they be expected to stay in his brain when it is simultaneously short-circuiting and leaking out of his ears?

“Um,” Sam all but squeaks, silently cursing the spike of heat that floods his cheeks because that means Dean is gonna _know_.

Except Dean seems oblivious to Sam’s discomfort, just continues to glare at him while stabbing a finger into Sam’s collarbone with bruising force. It knocks him into the door he’s already pressed against, the back of his head smacking off the wood with a dull thump, and Sam’s trying really hard to stop his hands from shaking at his sides.

“You’re a real pain in my ass. They’ve been tracking me since lunch, man, they’re practically a pack of _wolves_. All I wanted was a little breathing room and you can’t even give me that!”

“That’s ironic,” Sam tries to say it with a hint of sarcasm, but his voice has decided to drop all low and scratchy on its own accord. “Since you’re the one practically pinning me to the door here.”

Dean pauses and blinks owlishly at Sam for a moment as his words sink in. After taking in their respective positions, Dean with his arm and body bracketing Sam against the solid wood at his back and Sam with his face too red and his breath coming too fast, he all but leaps backwards, clearing his throat a few times before scrubbing a hand at the back of his head.

“Yeah, well, you were, just–” Dean stumbles over his words and the word _endearing_ pops into Sam’s head before he can shake it away.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he quips, moving around Dean to get back to his book.

Dean throws him a scowl just as three sharp raps echo from the front door, causing them both to spin in place and stare. Something happens then, like puzzle pieces sliding into place, both Sam and Dean somehow knowing where exactly to move. Sam’s hand is around the door handle as Dean presses his back to the wall so that when the door opens he’ll be hidden, and Sam can’t help but see it as some kind of game. Their eyes meet and Dean throws him a cheeky grin just before Sam opens the door and finds three girls on the steps of his cabin.

“Hi,” Sam says, keeping his hand on the handle in case he needs to slam it shut while leaning casually into the doorframe.

One girl elbows another girl who elbows the third, who then stumbles up a step to blush at him.

“Um, hey. Sam, right?”

Sam scrapes his hand through his hair to keep it from flopping in his face. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Hi. I’m Riley, and this is Karen and Josie. We were just, um–” Riley’s blushing again, her fingers playing with the hem of her shirt as she casts a nervous glance over her shoulder at her friends. They widen their eyes and shrug, so she sighs and looks back at Sam. “We were wondering if you’d seen Dean around, that’s all. We, uh, just have a question for him. Counsellor stuff. You know.”

“Dean?” Sam says thoughtfully as he looks up to ‘think’, the knowledge that Dean is less than a foot away really making him have to work to stop himself from smiling. “Actually, I did see him recently.”

A vice-grip latches itself onto the elbow Sam has hidden by the door, five fingers digging into his muscles as a warning. Sam can feel his throat close at the contact.

“Really?” Riley perks up, painfully oblivious. “Where?”

Sam clears his throat to let the words surface. “Lemme think,” he muses, trying to subtly lift his trapped arm high enough to shove at what he thinks is Dean’s shoulder to make him loosen his grip. “It was definitely after dinner. I think he was over by the dock.” Sam leans forward a bit, raising his eyebrows as he lowers his voice conspiratorially. “I heard that he sometimes goes skinny dipping there at night.”

The squeal that erupts from Riley’s mouth makes Sam jump back and the three of them are off with hurried “Thanks!”, the light from the bonfire illuminating their figures before they follow a curve in the path that makes them disappear completely. Sam shuts the door with his free hand before hooking his fingers around Dean’s to try to detach the death grip on his elbow.

“Ow, dude,” Sam complains as he gets a jab to the ribs.

“You’re such a little shit, man. Now they’re never gonna leave me alone.”

Sam wrestles himself away from Dean’s grip and lets his eyes drag over the scowl pulling at Dean’s mouth, the laugh that had died in his throat earlier unfurling once more. Sam tries not to notice the curious look Dean gives him as his laughter tapers off, choosing to turn away from the guy who has stirred up more confusion and self-doubt in Sam than he’s ever felt before in his life and instead get back to his dog-eared novel.

“Well, you’re home free now,” Sam says as he sits back down on his mattress, placing the book in his lap before making a shooing motion at his counsellor, tacking on a Southern slang with his accompanying, “Run, Forrest, run!”

That earns him a wry smile and a shake of Dean’s head, that weird look still on his face. It’s bugging Sam, making him shift uncomfortably where he sits, so he turns his eyes to his feet, trying to wiggle his pinky toe through a hole in his sock.

“What, you just gonna sit here and read a book all by yourself?” Sam can hear the creak of the bunk bed’s frame as Dean leans against it.

“That’s generally what happens when one reads.” Sam shrugs, gnawing on his bottom lip as he drags his thumb down the peeling spine of his paperback. Then the book is gone, his palms empty, leaving him blinking in confusion.

“‘The Ender’s Game’, huh?” Sam’s head snaps up, watches as Dean flips the book over with raised eyebrows to skim the synopsis on the back. “Sci fi. You a geek too, Sammy?”

“You’re such a jerk,” he hisses, snatching it back as heat creeps up his neck. “And it’s _Sam_.”

Dean grins down at him, flicks his ear, and his smile is so blinding that it takes a moment for Sam to remember that he’s supposed to be mad at Dean, that the last time they spoke it wasn’t the least bit fun. His thoughts must have leaked onto his face somehow, because he can see Dean’s throat start working at the same time he pushes himself off the bed frame.

Dean’s voice is lilting as he speaks, just this side of too casual, like he’s trying to hide something in his tone. “You really should do the bonfire. Get the whole ‘summer camp’ experience and all.”

An unattractive snort leaves Sam’s nose, sarcasm evident in his tone. “I’ve had my fill of Kumbaya for now, thanks.”

There’s a beat of silence that follows, the awkward air scratching at the back of Sam’s neck until he’s squirming again.

“C’mon,” Dean says suddenly, his fingers hot where they’re now overlapping at the top of Sam’s arm and yanking him to his feet. “Get dressed. Warm clothes. Bring your nerd book too.”

“What are you–” Sam manages to say before getting a sweatshirt thrown into his face, his hands scrambling to catch it before it falls to the floor. “Dude!”

“Let’s go, chop chop, move it along, kiddo!” Dean calls in time with claps from his hands, and Sam hurries to shove his arms in the sweater before wiggling his head through the main hole to glare at Dean.

“Where are we going?” Sam tries again as he paws at his hair, hoping the static hasn’t made him look like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket.

“Shoes,” Dean deflects, pointing at the pair at the end of Sam’s bed. Grumbling under his breath, Sam complies, but his heart is jumping high in his chest, a streak of heat that warms him from the inside out as his mind races to try to figure out what they’re about to do. He has a feeling they aren’t going to the bonfire, but even with a few more prompts from Sam, Dean remains closed lipped. So Sam trusts him, dressing warmly in baggy sweatpants and his sweater before shoving his feet in his shoes. He scoops up his book when he’s done to stare at Dean expectantly.

“I’m sweating already.”

Dean chuckles and shakes his head as he thumps over to the door, tossing a glance over his shoulder. “You’ll thank me later.”

As Sam follows Dean outside, the door clicking shut behind them, he realizes that’s the second time Dean has said that to him.

They stay in the shadows of the cabins nearby, stopping by the one Dean is in charge of so he can duck in quickly, returning in a dark grey hoodie that’s zipped up to his chin. Then they’re walking, quick, swishing steps through damp grass, past the parking lot and around the side of the dining hall to follow the path Sam had seen Parker take his group down earlier that week. The dirt is illuminated by the moon, silver painting the gnarled roots twisting at the edges of the path, and even though there are still shadows, Dean seems certain of his footing. He crunches his way down the gentle slope that leads into the trees that seem to line the circumference of the entire camp, and Sam takes care to step where Dean does, because it would be just his luck to trip and fall on his face.

Once they’re enveloped by the line of trees, Sam understands why Dean suggested the warm clothes. The air is closer here, chilled from the night and the proximity to the lake, and Sam can feel the blanket of cold trying to inch into his bones. He shakes it off, clenching his hands to use the heat of his palms to keep his fingers from going numb, his nails biting into his skin every time he sees Dean’s head twist to check if Sam’s still following. Like Sam would be anywhere else.

It’s another few minutes before the tree trunks open like a curtain to reveal a boathouse, the dark panelled wood hovering above the surface of the lake on thick stilts. Mouth parting slightly, Sam blinks at the building, mind churning as he tries to figure out why Dean would have brought him here. He’d never sensed a hint of malicious intent from Dean, so it’s unlikely that he might have brought him here so Parker could jump him. There’s just something about how secluded this area is, special, almost private, and judging by the way Dean’s shoulders visibly relax as he makes his way towards the entrance of the boathouse, this place _is_ special to him. _Sanctuary_ , Sam’s brain helpfully supplies. The thought rocks him back on his heels for a moment. Maybe Dean just brought him here for his own reasons, to share this solitude with him. Sam can feel his pulse kick up and tries to remember how to make his lungs work.

The sound of sand parting under Dean’s feet encourages Sam to get out of his head and step onto the beach. He makes his way to the wooden steps leading up to the door Dean’s just started to open. Sam steps through when Dean holds it for him and casts his eyes around, his eyebrows hiking up as he takes it all in.

Above them is a short row of suspended canoes, each of which could easily sit three people, the ropes holding them creaking with the wind blowing against the building outside. Various paddles and supplies like lifejackets adorn the walls, clustered in their respective groups and dangling off rusted hooks. To Sam’s immediate right is a couple of steps leading down to the open rectangle of water where about six kayaks are floating gently. The lapping of the water on the hollow hulls that are tethered to small posts reaches his ears, a drowsy, natural lullaby.

Sam turns to Dean and asks his question with his eyes. He wants to preserve their silence, so he doesn’t speak, only nods when Dean jerks his chin to the opposite side of the room, where another door sits. The planks under their feet groan with each step, tracking their path until Dean pauses in front of the door, pulling out a ring of keys that he deftly flicks through until he finds the right one. The lock unlatches easily and a staircase is revealed that can only lead to the second story of the boathouse. They ascend slowly, hands on the rail, and Sam focuses on his feet and the sound of their collective breaths until they reach the top. The ceiling is low, so Sam has to crouch a bit to not knock his head, but taking in the loft in front of him makes him feel like he smacked face first into a wall anyway.

“It’s–” Dean’s voice makes Sam jump, but he can’t stop his gaze from arcing across the room, taking in the rolled out bedspread right underneath the domed skylight that is letting in the perfect amount of moon and starlight, the posters dutifully tacked to the walls, the duffel bag near the pillows, and the old cassette player perched on a small chest of drawers pressed against the wall farthest from where he stands. “It’s not much. Bobby lets me come out here sometimes. Kind of made it my own. For when I need to get away from–” Dean’s words, laced with vulnerability, come to a halt, which brings Sam’s eyes back to the boy at his side. Dean won’t meet his stare. Instead, he steps forward, uses the toe of his shoe to drag the few articles of clothing littering the floor over to his duffel and out of the way.

“Anyway,” Dean starts again, his tone carefully neutral again. “Seemed like you needed some space. So you can stay here for tonight, if you want.”

The lump in Sam’s throat is arresting his breath and his voice, so he simply moves forward until he’s underneath the skylight, tilting his head back to take in the night sky. He can see the first half of the Big Dipper, the handle disappearing where the edge of skylight merges once more with the wood.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll just get out of your hair,” floats into Sam’s hearing, making him whirl around to where Dean is placing his hand on the railing, ready to start his way back down the stairs.

“Hey, no, you can–” Sam trips over his words, face flushing at how dorky he sounds. “Thank you. Really. But you don’t have to go.”

Dean throws him a curious look, his eyes narrowing slightly, and it makes the hairs on Sam’s arms raise. Oh God, he didn’t mean it like _that_ , great, this is fucking _great_.

Holding up his hands in placation, Sam shakes his head and tries again. “I just mean – This is your place. You didn’t even have to bring me here, but you did. And I appreciate it, I do. I’d just… feel weird. Being in your space if you weren't around. If that makes sense.”

Dean hovers at the top of the staircase, rocking forward slightly onto his toes as his eyes burn holes into Sam’s head. Sam didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he lets it out when Dean lifts his shoulders in a shrug and leaves the stairs in favor of flopping down on the bedspread, limbs spread wide.

“Gotta make sure you don't snoop around,” Dean yawns, hand over his mouth before he drops it to scratch at his chest, eyeing Sam with a lazy grin. “You look like a snooper.”

“Sn-I'm not a snooper!” Sam balks, kicking at the foot nearest to him to make Dean grunt.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see.” Dean stretches and gets up to leisurely make his way over to the cassette player. He shimmies one of the drawers open, the clattering of plastic on plastic filling Sam’s hearing. “I’m gonna play music and you’re gonna say shit all. House rules.”

“As long as it’s not country, I think I can deal,” Sam mumbles, somewhat distracted as he looks around for a place to sit. Sharing the bedroll is just really not an option, not with Sam’s emotions on the fritz and his head feeling like an egg fried in the sun whenever Dean flashes a smile.

“Country,” Dean scoffs faintly. “Like I’d listen to _country_.”

“You seem like you enjoy your fair share of banjo,” Sam teases, quirking an eyebrow as he lifts his eyes to the back of Dean’s head.

Shifting onto his heels, Dean half turns his body, scorn painting his mouth down into a frown as he raises a cassette tape in its plastic casing, held tight between two fingers. “I take offense to that.”

Sam shakes his head, bemused, as Dean tucks the tape into the player, various clicks floating in the damp air of the loft as his fingers press the appropriate buttons. Soon enough, a crooning guitar accompanied by Robert Plant’s voice is seeping into the wood, joined by the faint sound of water lapping the boats below them.

Dean, humming along under his breath, opens the second drawer and produces something long and thick, and the next thing Sam knows, the object is hurtling towards his face. Yelping, he drops his book in favor of catching it to prevent a black eye or serious concussion. It’s cool, made of metal, sitting heavy in his palms. Once Sam steps back into the silver square of light from above, he can see that it’s a flashlight.

“For your nerd book.”

Sam looks up to Dean toeing off his shoes and flopping back onto the bedroll. He flaps the blankets out that had been kicked to the bottom and shimmies under them in a way that reminds Sam of a toddler he once babysat for an evening a couple years back when he had been trying to save up money for a new CD he’d wanted.

“What are you, a horse? You sleep standing up or somethin’?”

Irritation flares hot through Sam’s chest, his frown etching itself onto his face when he bends to pick his book up off the floor. Sam doesn’t know why, God, he doesn’t know a lot of things right now, but Dean’s ability to piss him off with inexplicable ease is really getting under his skin.

Instead of saying something stupid that’ll just get him kicked out of the loft, Sam ignores Dean’s jab and kicks off his shoes. He sits down heavily on the left side of the bedroll, crossing his legs on top of the blankets. It’s the best form of rejection he has in his arsenal, his silence and his refusal to get comfortable, a way of silently punishing Dean for being the annoying jerkwad that he is. And Sam can tell it bugs him, Dean lifting himself onto his elbow to stare at Sam turning the flashlight on before hunching over his book where he left off, the harsh yellow circle illuminating the text on the page.

A bluster erupts from Dean, his lips flapping obnoxiously as he falls back against his pillow. “You make it too easy, dude.”

Sam whirls, nearly cracking his spine in half with the way he twists at the waist to glare down at Dean, his stupid hair spiking up in disarray on the blank slate of his pillowcase. “You know what? I don’t get you.”

“You don’t get me, huh?” Dean drawls, tucking his arms behind his head with a thin, languid smile. “Well there’s not much to _get_ , kiddo.”

“Like I’m gonna believe that,” Sam snaps, trying his best not to be derailed when the moonlight catches Dean’s eyes and turns them into matte silver. “You’re everywhere! I mean, you go out of your way to help me when you don’t even know me, then you go and pull the authority card when I tell you I’m handling my own business, and now you’re waltzing into my cabin acting like we’re old pals. What is _with_ you?”

“You call starting beef with a guy twice your weight ‘handling your own business’?” Dean laughs in disbelief, sitting up fully now.

“It wasn’t your place to butt in,” Sam shoots back. “Parker shouldn’t even be a counsellor in the first place if he’s gonna threaten the kids he’s supposed to be helping.”

There it is, the shutter slamming down Dean’s face, closing off all emotions to leave him rigid and stony. “And I told you that you shouldn’t talk about crap that you don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand!” Sam turns until he’s fully facing Dean, unconsciously leaning forward as he spreads his arms wide. “You couldn’t be more vague if you tried!”

Dean scoffs, jerking his head away from Sam. He can see how hard Dean’s jaw is working, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief, appearing and disappearing beneath the smooth column of skin. Sam would have to be blind to not see that this is a sensitive subject, so he stomps down the flames in his chest, tampering them with blankets of calm until his fingers are no longer itching to smother Dean with his pillow for being so goddamn frustrating.

“Dean, it’s not like–”

Still staring off to the side, Dean cuts him off abruptly. “You ever hear of those programs that keep troubled youth off the streets? Give ‘em a chance to do something that’ll stop them from going down the wrong path and all that crap?”

Sam sits back a little, his hands falling into his lap. His stomach feels like a heavy, black pit. “Yeah, I have.”

Dean casts his eyes back over to Sam, tilting his head slightly so it somehow looks condescending. “Same sort of deal here. Bobby looks out for us, helps keep us in line. Park…” Dean looks down at the blankets and thumbs the corner of his mouth, his forehead creasing. “He’s still got a ways to go.”

“Wait, so… all of you?” Sam ventures cautiously. He takes in the slant of Dean’s shoulders, the arm he’s using to hold himself up where he sits and the palm spread wide on the soft mattress, the soft triangles of hair that make him look younger, and tries to imagine him in dark alleys, exchanging drugs with money, coat collar turned up to hide his face. The image doesn’t fit, and Sam brushes it away. “You don’t seem like–”

“We’re not always what we seem, are we?” Dean says, interrupting him again. Sam just falls silent, a thrill of fear shooting up his spine. There’s a glint in Dean’s eye, something like a warning in the dark circles of his pupils that are swallowing his irises, so desperate and intense that Sam has to drop his gaze to his fingers that are playing with the hem of his sweater.

“No,” Sam mutters. “I guess not.”

Dean makes a noise in the back of his throat and drops down to his side on the makeshift bed, facing away from Sam. It’s quiet. The only thing Sam can hear is blood pounding in his ears, the music entirely drowned out by the unexpected rush of adrenaline coursing through him. He doesn’t know what he should do, torn between grabbing his book and getting the hell out of there or staying like he wants to. Tension is sticky in the air, pulling the skin of Sam’s cheeks tight as he rubs his lips together to keep himself from speaking, the tense line of Dean’s back screaming volumes.

Tilting his head back over his shoulders, Sam turns his gaze skyward, letting his eyes dance between the faint pinpoints of light scattered across the black sheet of the night. The moon is just reaching the top corner of the domed glass, hanging there like a hazy silver Christmas ornament. Sam spends way longer than intended trying to figure out of he sees the face of a man in the dark spots painting the moon or if it’s a sideways rabbit. In the end, he lands on the rabbit. His mom was the one who always swore she could see the man. Just like that, homesickness sweeps through his body, drooping his eyelids and drawing his legs up to his chest so he can hug them.

“I can go,” Sam whispers, scritching the fabric covering his left knee to avoid looking at Dean. He’s not even sure if Dean is awake to hear his proposition, but then Dean is moving, rolling his head until Sam spots one of Dean’s eyes squinting over his shoulder.

“Don’t be stupid.” Dean’s voice is a low rumble, a handful of rocks sliding down the back of Sam’s shirt. “‘M not kickin’ you out.”

“But–” Sam casts a glance over to the staircase, gnawing at his bottom lip.

Dean shifts so he’s facing away from Sam again, his words slurring a bit in his drowsiness. “If you wanna go, then go. But it was jus’ a talk, Sammy, Christ. Doesn’t mean you have t’ leave.”

Muscles that Sam didn’t even know he was tensing relax at Dean’s truce. Unfolding himself, Sam picks up his book and the flashlight and scoots to the side so he can pull down the blanket. Wriggling in without brushing Dean is a bit of a challenge, but Sam keeps to his side, gathering his pillow under his chin as he props his book against the wall near their heads and turns the flashlight back on.

Swallowing hard, Sam finds the page where he left off, brings the circle of light to the words, and lets his own fall from his mouth. “It’s Sam.”

A short chuckle rises to Sam’s right, more of a breathy laugh than anything. “Whatever you say, Sammy.”

Maybe it’s the way that the nickname curled around Sam’s ear like a caress, something soft that made his blood sing high and hot in his veins. Whatever it is, Sam can’t find it in himself to correct Dean again.

 


	2. Blinded By A Smile That Could Rival The Sun

Sam doesn’t remember falling asleep.

The first thing he realizes when he breaks past the hazy wall back into consciousness is that his entire body is warm, almost too warm, with the exception of the tip of his nose, which is numb. The second is that he has a twinge in his shoulder, probably from the position of his neck on the thin pillow that he’s not used to sleeping on. The third thing, and probably the most confusing, is that there’s a circle of heat welding Sam’s skin to his bones, right where the top of his pants are digging into his hip.

Sam assesses all of this information slowly, reality sinking into his brain as his still sleep-heavy eyelids flutter open. For a moment, he’s disoriented, struck dumb with the unfamiliarity of seeing a chest of drawers in his line of vision instead of Dominic hanging halfway out of his bunk like usual. Then last night’s events filter in, leaving Sam even more unsure as to how he let himself fall asleep when he can feel his arm twisted beneath his body awkwardly, spikes of near-painful needles scattering up his limb as he starts to shift around.

A huff leaves him as he wiggles more fully onto his right side, managing to get his numb arm stretched out in front of him, content to stay still until the tingling subsides. But with the awareness of his surroundings beginning to sharpen, Sam’s focus drifts to the unusual feeling at his waist, one he can’t put a finger on until he leans back and shifts his shoulders to create a gap in the blanket wide enough for him to see the source.

Sam could’ve sworn that there was oxygen in the room a moment ago, he really could have. His lungs tighten and twist inward, expelling a harsh breath as Sam looks down at the large, calloused hand on his waist, fingers dangling loosely to brush over the edge of his abdomen. His sweater had hiked up during the night, no doubt from his tossing and turning that almost ritually ends up with him spread eagle and sideways on his mattress at home. Because of this, the hand, the one belonging to the arm that Sam is now acutely aware of as it brushes his shoulder, is on his bare skin. Rough fingertips skim one of the most sensitive spots of Sam’s body, the soft space just to the side of his belly button, and fills his chest with molten lava.

The urge to scramble to his feet and bolt is overwhelming.

The urge to stay put, to stay right where he is, is unbearable.

First thing’s first: breathe. Sam settles his shoulders so the blanket floats back down and remains on his side, staring forward blankly. Dean. This is Dean’s hand. Here. On Sam’s hip. Sam’s stomach.

The wheeze that exits his mouth is alarming, deafening in the near silence of the loft. The faint sound of water laps at Sam’s ears, rising up through the cracks of the wood they’re sleeping on as dawn tightens its hold on the slate grey sky above, creating a delicate, invisible air around them. If Sam moves too much, breathes too loud, it’ll shatter and rain down on him like glass. He just can’t afford that.

So Sam slowly breathes in through his nose, the sensation weird as it is still numb from the cool night, and then lets it gust out of his mouth. He knows that Dean is asleep, can feel it in the heavy weight of his arm against Sam’s, completely dead to the world. It had been unconscious, him reaching for Sam, just the attraction of body heat to body heat when the blanket hadn’t been enough. That’s what Sam tells himself, anyway.

A puff of hot air tickles the nape of Sam’s neck, forcing his eyes to squeeze shut and his body to tense as he feels Dean’s forehead gently nudge the back of his head. At the same time, the hand, that goddamned hand, twitches, _moves,_  opens up and slides torturously slow to the front of Sam’s stomach.

Sam stifles a moan by turning his face into the pillow, fingers clawing at the material as he tries his best to not wake Dean up. Because he’s still asleep, his deep and even breaths not skipping in the slightest as he moves, and Sam doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. Goosebumps litter his entire body, making him tremble, and the feeling of Dean’s palm tight on his belly, slightly damp from the humid air beneath their shared blanket, has his brain shutting down. It’s like every nerve Dean is brushing is connected to an array of tiny fireworks that shoot and spark beneath his skin. With a harsh swallow, Sam becomes aware of his usual morning issue just a few inches below the band of his sweatpants, the familiar ache only heightened by Dean’s touch.

God, this is dangerous. Too dangerous. He’s toeing the line, the one he never even thought he’d look at, let alone want to step over. But there’s something about Dean, in all his infuriating glory, that draws Sam in like a moth to flame. It’s in those times where he’s transparent, where Sam has caught a glimpse of worry and concern where there shouldn’t be. Dean doesn’t know him, has barely held a proper conversation with Sam for more than five minutes, but he still gets this look on his face. Like Sam’s a mystery and something familiar all wrapped up into one.

Sam’s thoughts spill out of his ears when he feels another twitch and then the solid press of five fingertips kneading into his skin. Curling his shoulders in on himself, Sam struggles to breathe through the sensation that straddles the border between ticklish and too good. The air hitting his neck is coming a bit faster now, Dean moving around in his sleep until Sam can feel the ghost of his mouth at his hairline, sending pulses of electricity all across his scalp and down his back. Dreaming. He’s dreaming and he’s asleep and Sam is letting an unconscious Dean feel him up. This is a whole new level of wrong.

He should move. He should definitely move. That would wake Dean up. Unless he’s a deep sleeper? Sam clamps his teeth down on his bottom lip and tries to will his body to stop reacting the way that it is because it doesn’t _mean_ anything. Okay, so Dean gropes people in his sleep. That’s one fact Sam can scribble onto the mostly blank mental note of things he knows about his counsellor.

Just as Sam is in the middle of his mental turmoil, he feels Dean jerks violently with an accompanying snort, which makes Sam jump too. And just like that, he hears the long, slow intake of breath that signifies Dean’s gradual re-immersion into the waking world. Sam closes his eyes and stills himself, letting his own breaths deepen despite the harsh pounding in his chest. The only other thing that could make this worse was if Dean realized that Sam had allowed this, that he had been awake and didn’t do anything to stop it.

The hand on Sam’s stomach flexes out wide before settling back on his skin like a five-fingered brand. On Sam’s next inhale, one that pushes his stomach outward and right into Dean’s palm, he feels tension harden the muscles in Dean’s arm as he _gets it_ right before the hand springs free of Sam’s abdomen. Sam struggles to keep his breathing even as he feels Dean hovering, his hand hanging suspended just an inch or two from where it had made its home for the better part of the night.

It’s insane that Sam can sense the proximity between Dean’s skin and his own, so acute that he feels like he could count the number of air particles separating them. A shaky breath sweeps the hairs along the nape of Sam’s neck as Dean makes his next move, which is a very ginger retraction of his arm from Sam’s waist before rolling over. There’s a moment, one that zips through Sam’s chest and makes it seize up all tight, as Sam realizes that he misses the heat of Dean’s body nearly touching his.

A full minute passes before Dean even seems to breathe. Some rustling and the sudden wave of cold air on Sam’s back makes him shiver, right before a hand, that same hand, shakes his shoulder.

“C’mon, Sammy. Up and at ‘em.” Dean’s voice is deep and raspy from his sleep, and Sam tries to ignore the way that the hairs on his arms raise because of it.

Turning and snuffling his face into his pillow is only part of Sam’s act, because he really is still tired. But Dean isn’t having it, apparently, going so far as to yank at Sam’s hair like the ass that he is to tug Sam up into a sitting position.

“Ow!” Sam croaks, opening one eye to glare as he bats Dean away. “Do you always act like a two-year-old when you wake up? I feel bad for your sibling on Christmas morning.”

Dean rolls his eyes as he flips the covers off his legs and stands, hands on the base of his spine as he leans backwards, a series of dull pops reaching Sam’s ears. “Don’t have one. Thank God.”

“What, you never wanted a brother or sister?” Sam yawns, the hand covering his mouth still shaking a bit from the lingering imprint that Dean’s palm seems to have seared into his skin.

“Nah,” Dean shrugs, bending over to start rifling through his duffel bag. Sam nearly breaks his neck in his haste to turn and look the other way. “I was enough of a handful by myself. Can’t imagine the shitshow our house would’ve been with a mini-me.”

The snort that leaves Sam is unbidden, as is the way his eyes force themselves over again to stare at the older boy. “Who says they’d wanna be like you?”

Dean makes a wounded noise, clearly fake if his pouty expression is anything to go by. “Hey! I would be the best big brother in the world. ‘Course they’d wanna be like me.”

Shrugging, Sam plays with the blankets that are rumpled in his lap as he cycles through the memories of him walking in on his grandma and grandpa making out in the second floor bathroom after his mom hosted a family dinner party a few years back. They do the trick, his persistent problem fading enough that he can spin to the side and adjust himself in his sweatpants before rising again with his hands scrubbing through his hair.

“You don’t think I’d be a good big brother?”

Something in Dean’s voice makes Sam stop from where he was about to reach down to pick up his novel. Looking up, he finds Dean shirtless, his dirty one in his left hand and the one Sam assumes he’s about to put on in his right. Their eyes meet and Sam deems it a miracle that his gaze doesn’t wander down. There’s a way that Dean’s mouth is set, along with a dip in his furrowed brows, that almost looks like hurt and it sculpts a hard lump in the center of Sam’s throat.

“You’d be a great brother, Dean,” he says haltingly, before swallowing hard. “I was just kidding.”

Dean jerks a little, just a twitch of the shoulders like he’s knocking himself out of a trance. He then scoffs a laugh, tossing his dirty shirt down into the bag before putting on the wrinkled white one in his other hand. “‘Course you were.”

Sam swallows and ducks his head to grab his book before finding his shoes. “You, uh, I can help clean up-”

Dean waves him off as he gets his feet into his own pair. “I’ll come back later, don’t worry ‘bout it. Bobby’s gonna be pissed anyways, so we should, ah, probably get you back to your bunk.”

“Bobby?” Sam pales.

“Yeah, that whole curfew thing, y’know.” _Wow_ , Dean’s being too nonchalant for something that’s probably gonna end up getting Sam kicked out of camp.

“You mean the thing that I broke that is gonna ship me off back home after only being here, like, four days? _That_ whole curfew thing?” Sam will go to his grave defending the fact that, _no_ , his voice did not rise up in pitch like a little girl’s just now, thank you very much.

“The very same.” Dean claps a hand on Sam’s shoulder, smiling in reassurance. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him. Say you were homesick, just needed some alone time. Bobby’s a good guy. He’ll understand.”

“And what am I supposed to say to everyone else?” Sam hedges, too scared to meet Dean’s eyes so he fixes them on the toes of his sneakers.

“Nothin’. Let ‘em guess.” An elbow jabs the meat of his arm, making him scowl. It doesn’t hurt _that_ bad, but damn if Dean doesn’t know right where to hit to make it smart. “You can keep that whole mysterious wounded artist thing going for a while with somethin’ like this.”

That makes Sam yank his gaze up to meet a pair of twinkling green irises. “Mysterious _what_?”

A full-bodied laugh leaves Dean as he starts to make his way down the staircase, Sam scrambling to follow.

“No, Dean, c’mon! What the hell are you talking about?”

“As if you don’t know!”

Sam catches Dean across the boathouse, right before he opens the door to step onto the porch outside. Slapping his hand on the door to keep it shut, Sam huffs in Dean’s face, his neck bent slightly to look down at him.

“Explain.”

Dean rolls his eyes before staring back evenly. “C’mon, Sammy. The sad puppy dog face? The brooding over your breakfast? The fact that you’d rather spend time with books more than your friends? And then there’s _this_ -” Dean pauses to lift his hand between them and shove his fingers into the hair flopping over Sam’s forehead. Sam jolts, completely caught off guard, eyes wide as Dean tightens his grip just enough to send waves of needles dancing down his arms before tugging playfully. “The perfect emo boy hair. You got the whole package, kiddo.”

Sam doesn’t register the soft noise that leaves his mouth when his hair gets pulled a second time until he sees Dean’s cheeks start to fill with color. At the very same instant, Dean drops his hand as Sam steps away, white knuckling the book in his hands as he clears his throat and moves his gaze over to the bobbing kayaks, face aflame. That did not just happen. That did _not_ just happen. Sam wonders how long it would take him to drown if he just walked right out into the lake.

“Anyways,” Dean says a little too brightly. “How about that brooding breakfast act? I think the kitchen’s made coffee by now if you wanna go grab some.”

“Um, I don’t drink coffee,” Sam mutters as he tenses and untenses his grip on his book repeatedly in an attempt to get some of this nervous energy out of his system.

Dean snorts like what he said was genuinely funny and the tension in the air suddenly floats away. “If you’re gonna be here for the summer, you’re gonna want to start. Trust me.”

Sam chances a glance at Dean’s face. He’s relaxed, or seems to be, an easy smile on his face from his teasing as he holds the door open. As Sam moves past him, he tries a tentative smile back. “I’ll thank you later?”

The responding grin turns Sam’s stomach into a molten volcano.

“Now you’re getting it.”

Walking along the path to get back to the main camp is only a little easier at five in the morning than it was in the pitch black of night. Sam does his best to watch where Dean steps and follows dutifully, just like the evening before. As Dean predicted, there are lights on in the kitchen of the dining hall, the back door propped open as the smell of hash browns reach Sam’s nose.

“Go in and tell ‘em I sent you to get us coffee. I’m gonna go see Bobby.” Dean says it so quickly that Sam barely has time to register it before he’s gone, disappearing around the corner of the building.

“By - by myself?” Sam squeaks, staring at the open door where he can see multiple people crossing back and forth, chatting in conversational tones as pots clang and knives thunk on cutting boards. Sam spends another ten minutes hesitating, shifting back and forth on his feet until his numb fingers drive him forward enough to peek his head in and ask for two cups of coffee, casually dropping Dean’s name into his question.

A burly man with thick black curls guffaws before pouring the drinks, capping one without adding anything before asking what Sam wants in his. With a stammer, he admits he hasn’t had coffee before, and he watches in amazement as the man nods, spoons some sugar into his cup along with a long splash of milk before dashing something brown on top. He hands the cups to Sam with a flourish and a grin.

“Try that and let me know how you like it,” the man chuckles before pinching Sam’s cheek. “And tell Dean to get his ass in here next time instead of sending an errand boy.” The teasing is evident in his tone but it still makes Sam blush as he thanks him, followed by apologizing profusely for no reason as he leaves with two scalding hot cups of coffee in hand and his book tucked under his arm.

Once Sam is outside again, he’s at a loss. It’s not like Dean told him to meet him anywhere. Is he supposed to go back to his cabin? Leave Dean’s coffee on his doorstep? Go to Bobby’s cabin? A little confused, Sam slowly starts to make his way in the direction he saw Dean walk. Gingerly raising his cup to his mouth, he takes a sip. The faint hint of cinnamon mingles with the coffee flavor muted by sugar and milk, all of it swirling pleasantly across his palate. Raising his eyebrows to himself, Sam smiles a bit. Maybe he can get into this.

The creaking of a door draws Sam’s head to the side. Several yards away, Dean is standing on the second step of what Sam assumes to be Bobby’s cabin, his hands in his sweater pockets as he talks to the older man. Dean does have some height, but his position on the step makes it so they’re eye to eye. Bobby is without his cap for the first time Sam’s ever seen, and he can’t hear what they’re saying, but Bobby doesn’t look mad so Sam’s gonna assume the best. With nothing better to do, Sam slowly starts to make his way over, flexing his fingers away from the hot paper cups to let them cool before having to wrap around the coffees again. Bobby’s rumbling voice reaches Sam’s ears along with the sound his soles are making against the dew-heavy grass.

“-sure you know what you’re doin’?”

Dean grins, shoulders rolling back as he tilts his head in a way that Sam’s only ever seen him do. “‘Course I do, Bobby. It’ll be fine.”

Sam’s close enough now that he can see Bobby’s eyes narrow before flickering over to him. Sam freezes mid-step, his left foot hovering above the ground. For a terrible second, he thinks he’s going to tip forward and fall on his face.

“You. C’mere.”

His words leave no room for anything except obeying, so Sam puts his foot down and hops to it, closing those last few feet until he’s just off the side of the steps where Dean is still standing. Both older men are staring at him now, Dean with amusement and Bobby with something bordering curiosity and confusion.

“What’s your name again, boy?” Bobby asks Sam directly, and Sam nearly spills both coffees on himself.

“Uh, S-Samuel. Sam. It’s Sam,” he stutters. Deciding it’s a safety hazard to have two boiling hot beverages in each hand, he stretches out the plain black coffee towards Dean, who takes it with a pleased hum.

“Caffeine,” Dean sighs as he pops off the cap and takes a deep inhale, something dreamy floating across his features. Sam only stares a little bit.

“Samuel, huh?”

Sam’s head whips back to Bobby before he nods and uses his free hand to pull his book out from under his arm. “Yessir.”

“That it? Just Samuel? Nothin’ else?”

Flushing, Sam ducks his head so his bangs fall in front of eyes. “Campbell, sir.”

Bobby goes quiet. Cautiously looking up again, Sam watches as Bobby pulls his fingers through his beard in slow, measured strokes.

“And we’ve never met before?”

Sam blinks. “No, sir, not that I can recall.”

“ _Recall_ ,” Dean drawls with a roll of his eyes. “It’s five in the morning, Sammy, you can cut the formality crap.”

“He can be as formal as he damn well pleases!” Bobby huffs. “Just ‘cause you think I tolerate your shit don’t mean this boy ain’t smart enough to realize I should be talked to with respect.”

“But you _do_ tolerate my shit,” Dean points out as he lifts his coffee to his mouth.

With a scowl, Bobby reaches forward and plucks the drink right out of Dean’s fingers to take a sip himself. Wrinkling his nose, he shoves it right back into Dean’s stunned grasp with a grunt. “Black. Shoulda known. That’s just _wrong_ , boy, haven’t you heard of cream?”

“Black as my soul, Bobby. ‘S the only way I’ll take it.”

Bobby just shakes his head and waves them both away. “Get off my steps, Dean, before I make ya.”

Dean chuckles and hops down, capping his lid as he makes his way to Sam’s side. Poking his elbow into Sam’s arm, Dean jerks his head towards the woods and starts forward. Sam begins to follow, only to be stopped by a rough, “Sam.”

Turning around, Sam catches Bobby leaning heavily against the doorframe, that odd look back on his face.

“Yessir?”

“I know it’s tough now, bein’ away from your family and all. ‘Specially if it’s your first time. You just remember that we try to be a home away from home. You need somethin’, just ask. We clear?”

Heat spikes at the back of Sam’s eyes and curls low in his chest, forcing him to clear his throat before he can even answer. “Yessir. We’re clear. Thank you.”

Bobby nods before narrowing his eyes at Dean’s back. “And if I hear about you boys breakin’ curfew again, I’m gonna have me a new pair of heads to tack up on my trophy wall. You hear me, Dean?”

Dean’s laughter echoes across the deserted field. With a shake of his head, Bobby is gone, the door smacking loudly on the wooden doorframe as it closes behind him.

“C’mon, Sammy. Wanna show you something.”

There’s a path behind Bobby’s cabin that isn’t as well worn as the one they walked earlier. This one curves sharply into the thicket of trees and is only wide enough for two people to walk side by side, so that’s how they end up, their shoes scuffing over the dirt amongst the wind in the trees and their shoulders brushing now and again. It’s cool again, like the tree trunks are wooden sponges that soaked up the low temperatures of the night. Sam tucks his novel back under his arm so he can curl both hands around his coffee, shivering just a little with relief as he draws some semblance of warmth from it.

“Gimme that,” suddenly breaks the silence that has blanketed them for the past ten minutes of their walk before Sam feels his book pulled free from his arm. He turns to see Dean stuff it into the pocket of his hoodie and can’t help but smile a little.

“Thanks,” he says, letting his fingers knit together on his cup.

Dean waves him off, but Sam thinks he sees a pleased glint in Dean’s eyes. They continue to walk, the oppressive feeling of being alone together constricting Sam’s lungs to short, shallow breaths. Just like that, he realizes that for the second time in less than twelve hours Dean is taking him somewhere and Sam has no clue where or why. What if this is their punishment for staying out past curfew? Is there some sort of cabin way out in the forest to shun people who have broken the rules? Before he can really work himself up to the point of stress, Sam swallows and raises a hand to fidget with the hair above his right ear.

“So, um… where are we going?”

Dean takes an exaggerated step over one particularly large and gnarled root on his side of the path, inadvertently bumping him into Sam.

“You’ll see.”

“That’s reassuring,” Sam mutters, eyeing Dean carefully before going ahead to slurp obnoxiously at his coffee. The grossed out look that Dean throws his way as a result makes him grin toothily.

“Now who’s the two-year-old, huh?”

“Still you,” Sam says. Dean scowls.

“Bitch,” he mutters, sticking his leg out in front of Sam. He would’ve face planted if not for the tree within arm’s reach that he caught himself on,  the bark scraping roughly against his palm.

“Hey! Jerk!” Sam spits out as he gets his feet back under him. Dean just laughs and keeps walking. Sam fumes silently as he catches up, mourning the small amount of coffee that spilled from the lid when he tripped forward. Once he draws level with Dean again, he plants his hand on the back of Dean’s head and shoves it to the side, throwing him off balance. The resulting slew of swear words pulls a laugh from Sam and he skips away when Dean launches himself back at him in retaliation.

“So maybe you aren’t a two-year-old. You move more like an old man, really,” Sam taunts as he side-steps another swipe from Dean, this time made with the arm not holding his coffee.

“Fuck you!” Dean cries indignantly, finally getting a grip on the collar of Sam’s sweater to yank him closer.

“Those poor girls,” Sam continues, grinning as he tries to pull back. There’s a flame in Dean’s eyes, one that he can see clear as day from how close they are now. “They probably don’t know you get help from a little blue pill, do they?”

He can see a smile trying to pull up the side of Dean’s mouth but he’s fighting it, just like Sam’s fighting against Dean’s hold on him.

“You’re such a pain in the ass, dude. And I take offense to that.” They’re stumbling now, Dean forcing Sam to move backwards up the path with jerks to the left and right when it curves. For a fleeting moment, Sam worries about falling over the roots that no doubt litter the path he’s walking in reverse, but with his eyes locked on Dean’s face, he finds the thought blowing out of his mind with the next gust of wind that rattles the leaves above them. A sense of calm washes through his frame, loosening the muscles that were tense in their little scuffle. It takes him a moment to recognize it as trust. Dean won’t let him fall.

“If you take offense to it then that probably means it has some truth to it,” Sam reasons, his mouth pulling down in a way it has always done when he shrugs his shoulders up to his ears.

All he can see is Dean’s eyes following the curve of his lips before he’s suddenly bent in half at the waist and staring at their shoes in the dirt. Dean has him in a chokehold, his arm hooked around Sam’s neck to bring him closer to his body, and Sam starts to splutter as a set of knuckles starts grinding into the top of his head. He can’t do much more than flail, using his free hand to grab at the wrist of the hand Dean is noogying him with.

“Ow, fucker, leggo!”

“Apologize, Sammy, that’s the only way you’re gettin’ out of this!” Dean calls cheerfully, twisting his forearm to break the hold Sam managed to get on him. Sam huffs and plants his hand right next to where his face is being pressed into Dean’s stomach. He doesn’t let himself hover there, barely allows himself to breathe in Dean’s scent before he’s trying to shove himself free.

“Let go, Dean, c’mon!”

“Say you’re sorry, Sammy. What happened to respecting your elders?”

Sam snorts and jabs his fingers into Dean’s ribcage. He barely flinches. “So now you’re admitting that you’re an old man? My point is made, dude. Now let me go.”

“Fuck.” Dean coughs a little laugh and then the arm is gone from around Sam’s throat, the body his cheek was pressed against suddenly replaced with cool air. Blinking at how fast the situation turned around, it takes Sam a second to stand up straight again and meet Dean’s eyes. He’s chewing on his bottom lip and squinting at Sam with humor and just a hint of resentment. “Fine. You win this round. But I’ll get you back. You’ll see.”

Sam licks his index finger and swipes it through the air with a grin. One point for him. Dean just shakes his head and fists his hand in the fabric of Sam’s sweater to jerk him back into movement as he leads the way up the path again, letting go once Sam’s feet match his pace. “C’mon, you giant dork. We’re gonna miss it.”

“Miss what?” Sam asks just as they take a final turn that makes the trees in front of them fall away. He has to stop then, his entire body halting at the line of the woods as he takes everything in.

Dean continues walking forward to the bench that is artfully made from natural stone pushing up from the ground, not noticing that Sam isn’t right behind him anymore. Grass covers the small area that juts forward into empty space like a dull arrowhead, and Sam watches Dean’s silhouette sit on the rock before his head turns back to him. He’s glad that Dean doesn’t speak right then, because he’s still trying to make his synapses fire fast enough to make sense of it all. He can see the sky lightening right ahead of them, the top part of the horizon still a greyish blue that is being edged out by a soft but brilliant brush of pinks, oranges and yellows.

Forcing himself forward, Sam eyes the edges of this natural platform they seem to be on. He hadn’t even realize they had been travelling upwards, like a hill or small mountain, but judging by how the sides fall away down to the lake below, they have gone up a ways. He’s silent as he moves past the bench to the very tip of the ledge. The lake is a mirror, still and quiet before the day arrives to disturb it. To Sam’s left, he can see the land slope back down into flat terrain, making more beaches at least a half mile away before curving back to loop around to Sam’s right, eventually connecting with the beach their camp is on. And Sam can see it now, the dock where Bobby stood as he and Dean dragged his mattress out of the lake, the faint outline of the dining hall. The cabins are hidden by the trees that take over the ground not covered in sand.

Staring straight ahead, Sam assumes the diameter of the lake to be at least a mile and a half, maybe two, as he can barely make out the opposite side. It’s blurry, distorted by low lying clouds and the fog that still skims some areas of the water below. To say the sight is overwhelming would be an understatement, and Sam understands Dean’s reason for them being there even less.

Turning around, Sam pins Dean with his eyes and just stares.

Dean’s leaning forward, elbows on his knees as he uses both hands to bring his coffee to his mouth. His eyebrows are high up his forehead and even though his face is shadowed, Sam can see Dean’s eyes twinkling expectantly, like he’s waiting for Sam to clue in. Sam bites his lip hard. He doesn’t get it.

“You gonna sit down or what?” Dean asks, head tilting to the side.

It takes a second, but Sam’s tongue finally remembers how to form words. “Why are we here, Dean?”

Dean rolls his eyes and throws his arm along the uneven back of the bench, letting himself slouch down against the rock as he sets his coffee beside him. “You’re really thick sometimes, y’know that? Sit _down_ , Sam.”

Sam throws one last look over his shoulder before moving to Dean’s side. The stone is cold when he sits, seeping in through his sweatpants to chill the backs of his thighs. It reminds him that there’s no more warmth to be found in the cup in his hand, so he puts it to the side and makes a conscious effort to mimic Dean’s earlier position, elbows on his knees but with his chin propped up on his knuckles so he doesn’t chance leaning back into Dean’s arm. There’s only so much he can process at one time.

Then it clicks.

There’s an imperceptible pulse across the sky, and the very top curve of the sun peeks over the treeline in the distance to wash the sky in a brilliant gold. The hues of pink and orange deepen as the sun rises. It’s beautiful, enough to make Sam’s mouth part open in awe, but he can’t stop himself from dragging his gaze up to watch the part of the sky that is fading, his eyes straining to catch the last of the slate blue that blanketed him in memories from the moment he woke up.

“I come here when I can’t sleep.” Dean’s voice is low, a ribbon of velvet in Sam’s ear. “And I can’t sleep a lot.”

He turns to find Dean staring at him. Not like usual. Not with that calculating edge, like he’s trying to piece Sam into a puzzle he didn’t even know he was a part of, but softly. Like he’s waiting for something. The lump in Sam’s throat refuses to fade, no matter how hard he swallows. The air seems to be on fire along with the clouds, drying Sam’s throat and making his blood pulse hot through his veins.

“I’m sure you do this with all the girls.” It just falls out of him on autopilot, a lame attempt at a joke, something, _anything_ , to help saw through the tension here because Sam can’t take it. He can’t.

Everything stops when Dean’s eyes move between Sam’s, slow seconds sliding down his back as he watches Dean watching him. Sam feels like he’s stepped over the edge of a cliff, free falling into space with his heart in his mouth and the infinity of the unknown below him. Dean doesn’t need to speak for Sam to know that he’s wrong.

The sunrise has turned Dean into a golden statue, the sharp yellows highlighting the jut of his chin, the slight angle of his nose and the cut of his cheekbone. The green of his eyes becomes even more pronounced, so bright as it catches the reflection of the sun. Sam is scared that if he tears his eyes away then he’ll see Dean on every surface he looks at for the rest of his life, this breathtaking image branded into the back of his eyelids, silhouetted on each wall he sees.

Sam’s never experienced losing his breath at the sight of something beautiful before. It’s hard to find anything on that level in Kansas. But Sam understands it now, actually _feels_ his ribs close around his lungs like ivory claws to squeeze the air out of his chest. It hurts to look at Dean but it hurts even worse to think about not looking at him at all. He doesn’t know what to do.

“You’re missing the sunrise,” Dean says quietly, but he doesn’t show any indication of wanting to break the spell they both seem to be caught in. He’s closer than he was before and Sam doesn’t know if he was the one who moved or if it was Dean. Either way, Sam can feel the breath that carries Dean’s words skim across his mouth and his mind goes blank.

“No, I’m not,” Sam replies, just as low. He isn’t. He can see the myriad of colors sinking into the pores of Dean’s skin, all of them even more rich as they find a home on Dean’s body instead of across the sky. Sam eases his clasped hands down to hang between his knees as he watches Dean become part of the dawn. He’s reminded of earlier this morning, of the feeling that the world will shatter around him if he speaks too loud. Everything seems more fragile here on the bench with fire running its fingers along the tips of Dean’s eyelashes.

A slow smile inches its way across Dean’s face, and Sam is in such a state of limbo that he lets his eyes fall to watch it happen. Time creaks to a stop as he traces the lines of Dean’s mouth: the pronounced dip of his cupid’s bow, the full pillow of his bottom lip, how the light spilling from the rising sun is catching in the curve of his dimple.

There are alarms going off in the back of his head, muffled by the surreal atmosphere and the waves of heat that he can feel rolling off of Dean’s body and into his own. He shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s like his heart has been caught on a hook and the line is reeling him in, drawing his body forward until he can feel the tip of Dean’s nose nudging his own. No space now, barely anything, just millimeters of air that is humid from both of their exhales. Sam thinks he could breathe it in for the rest of his life.

He can’t help but shiver when he feels Dean’s palm lay against the side of his neck and his pounding heart skitters to a stop when the pad of Dean’s thumb from the same hand presses tightly to his parted lips. It’s like every nerve in his body has been scrubbed raw, all of them left tingling as they stretch his skin too tight.

“Who are you?” Dean whispers, the hair rising on Sam’s arms as he hears a hint of wonder in Dean’s voice. It takes Sam a moment to realize that Dean isn’t looking for an answer.

Moving slowly, giving plenty of time for Dean to pull away, Sam covers the back of Dean’s hand with his own and uses his fingers to push Dean’s thumb from his mouth. He nudges forward slightly until their foreheads touch. A soft sound leaves Dean’s throat and Sam can’t take it anymore, the buzzing in his ears and the constriction of his lungs and the way he can’t stop shaking because this is new and terrifying and yet feels so right. So he closes his eyes, breathes out, and leans in.

The first pass is a skim of Dean’s bottom lip against his own, so faint that Sam wouldn’t have thought it happened if not for the feeling of fireworks bursting along the line where their mouths connected for that sparse moment. The second time Sam moves, there’s no way to call it anything other than a kiss. He tilts his head and presses their lips together, lightly enough that Dean could break it, turn away and leave if he wanted to. What Dean does instead is tighten his grip on Sam’s neck as he breathes in deep through his nose before pulling Sam closer, effectively sealing their lips as one.

Sam’s other hand, lying uselessly by his thigh, lifts to cup Dean’s cheek and draw him in even closer, something telling him that he can’t allow a single inch of space to keep them apart. His fingers dig into the curve of Dean’s jaw, and right against the tips of his fingers can he feel the fast thrum of Dean’s pulse. Their lips part for a second, just one, as Dean draws back, and Sam is overwhelmed by the blackness behind his lids, the possibility that Dean is looking at him in disgust. The thought strikes him hard that this is it, it’s over, the dreamlike moment finally collapsed in on itself by the oppressive weight of reality. But then Dean is back at a different angle, lips urgent as they connect with Sam’s once more, kneading their mouths together so hard that Sam wonders if they’ll bruise. The very thought of having even a hint of a purple mark, a brand of where Dean’s mouth smashed into his, sends another shudder through his body, his lips opening on principle at the gasp he can’t hold back.

Dean doesn’t hesitate, just follows Sam’s lead to open his mouth as well before flicking his tongue against Sam’s. That smooth slide cracks the last wall of fear in Sam’s chest, the one that has been waiting for the shoe to drop and for Dean to yank himself away and leave Sam behind with nothing more than a black hole in his stomach and rejection in his veins. It’s like the overflowing of a dam, a power driving itself through Sam’s body to lurch into Dean to get a taste himself, and it’s all lost from there.

The coffee Dean had earlier, black and bitter without anything to dilute it, tastes like ambrosia to Sam as he finds it in layers on the inside of Dean’s mouth, something so unique and perfect that he doesn’t understand why he’s been the one blessed enough to experience it the way he is now. Sam’s desperate for it, needs every inch of Dean’s mouth claimed as his own. This is _his_ place now, this home he’s building with every groan he pulls out of Dean’s throat and every whine that he answers with. And Dean lets him, opens up beneath Sam’s kiss like the flowers are opening in the woods behind them as the sun climbs higher into the sky to bathe them in gold.

He’s breathless by the the time Dean pulls back, too caught up in the feeling of the warm hand still pressed to his neck and the residual tingling that lingers on his mouth to open his eyes right away. When he does flutter his eyelids open, halfway at least, he finds Dean staring at him with wide and luminous circles of green.

“Christ,” Dean mumbles, drawing Sam’s eyes to the bright red and abused skin of his lips. Apparently Sam’s mouth looks the same way, because Dean’s thumb is back to trace it in languid circles. “Christ, Sammy.”

Sam finds himself swaying slightly, leaning into the drag of Dean’s thumb to chase the sparks it leaves behind. All he wants is to taste Dean again, to get back that little piece of heaven that’s slipping away too fast. He’s not ready for it to end, his fingers squeezing desperately on Dean’s cheek. Dean seems to understand, shifting forward so their noses brush again as they just breathe each other. Sam sighs softly in relief, his heart fit to burst with how happy he is that Dean’s not ready for it to end either. There’s a sharp intake of breath from Dean when he moves into Sam, almost as if he’s chasing the sigh right back into his mouth.

This time it’s Dean who discovers the secret parts behind Sam’s lips, searching deep and hard for something Sam’s not sure he’ll find. His tongue traces lines into the roof of Sam’s mouth like a roadmap, a patterned trail that Sam hopes they both get lost in, a one-way ride with the windows down and the wind at their backs.

There’s desperation in the way Dean kisses Sam, hard like he thinks Sam’s going to suddenly disappear and then soft like an apology, breaking away for short moments to pant against Sam’s mouth before pressing in again. His palms are fused to the sides of Sam’s face, angling him so their mouths slot back together perfectly each time he comes back. Sam does his best to just hold on, one hand fisting the material of the side of Dean’s hoodie, the other spreading across the back of Dean’s head so he can feel Dean move, feel the way he guides them both into an experience that Sam knows he will never have again in his life.

When Dean sucks Sam’s bottom lip into his mouth and bites down gently, he can’t help the moan that leaves him in response. Dean’s teeth dig in deeper at the sound, his body leaning into Sam so hard that he has to drop a hand down to the bench behind him to stop himself from falling backwards. Dean seems to remember himself then, slowly easing off to instead burn a line of kisses from the corner of Sam’s mouth, down his jaw, to the column of his throat.

Sam blinks his eyes open when he feels Dean’s fingers hook around the high neck of his sweatshirt to pull it down far enough to expose his collarbone before Dean tucks his face into Sam’s skin. With each wash of breath that sweeps over his overheated skin, Sam shivers and tightens the grip of his already numb fist in Dean’s hoodie. He feels calloused fingertips bump their way across the long line of his clavicle before the outline of Dean’s lips sears itself into the dip that sits at the base of his throat. Turning his face into Dean’s temple, Sam buries his mouth into the short dirty blonde strands tickling his cheek.

“Dean,” he whispers, his voice cracking. He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for. Cupping Sam’s jaw, Dean raises his head to meet Sam with a final kiss, so gentle that it makes Sam’s heart ache. He tries not to feel disappointed when Dean pulls away, loosening his hold so his hands fall into his lap.

Sam watches as Dean extracts himself slowly until he’s sitting back against the bench, staring blankly ahead with his hands now deep in the pockets of his hoodie. Sam feels dazed, half out of his mind. He can’t make himself look away from the man in front of him, the one now fully engulfed in the light of the sun. Dean’s beauty is as natural as their surroundings, and for a moment, Sam gets the urge to just stand up and leave. He doesn’t deserve to be here, to witness something this incredible. Not him. This can’t be real.

“I’m not gay.”

Sam flinches away, an automatic response that widens the space between both of their bodies. Right. Of course. Not real. Not for someone like him. He almost wants to laugh, just throw his head back and let it out until his lungs collapse and his throat dries up. Instead, he swallows and looks away from Dean to the painter’s canvas that is the sky.

“Neither am I,” he rasps in return, blinking hard as he watches the last pinks of the earlier sunset be smudged away by the yellow rays.

He can see Dean nod in his peripheral vision, one slow duck of his head. Sam’s suddenly too tired to try and figure out what that means. His chest is aching, turning in on itself until it's bruising his soul. He’s received the most important message here, though. He’s figured out that much.

Reaching over, Sam picks up his half full cup of coffee and pushes to his feet, praying to God and anyone else up there for the strength to make it back to his cabin before his legs give out. He can still feel the wet spot on his collarbone left behind by Dean’s lips, so he rubs at the neck of his sweater in an attempt to wipe it away. It does nothing to get rid of the fire that lingers behind.

Judging by the pressure at the back of his eyes, Sam doesn’t have very long before tears start to fall. He turns and starts walking, sneakers swishing through the grass that leads to the path they stumbled up however long ago, before everything got fucked up. Could’ve been years, for all Sam knows.

“Sam.”

He hears it. He does. It’s faint, just low enough to be carried on the soft wind that ruffles the hair sweeping across his forehead. He pretends that he doesn’t, though, and by the time he takes the first curve back into the woods, he knows that Dean won’t try to follow him.

The walk back to camp seems to take longer than Sam remembered, but he finds the barest hint of comfort in the woods seeming to have released the hold they had on the cold from last night. He takes his time, measuring his steps to fall in time with his breaths as he picks his way down the path. He stumbles without Dean there to step over the roots that Sam mistakes as lumps of dirt, but he doesn’t want to think about Dean anymore, so he focuses on the damp smell of the woods and the sound of rustling leaves. There’s just the slow brightening of the sky through the treetops overhead and the same hollow pit eating its way through Sam’s stomach, dagger teeth scraping the inside of his bones.

Part of him wants to just press his back to a tree and slide down into the earth, let it swallow him up and forget any of this ever happened. The rest of him knows he just needs to climb back into bed, his own this time, and let sleep wipe the entire morning away.

Though the air around him is warming up, Sam blearily realizes that his face feels cold. Raising his free hand, he drags it down his cheek and comes to a halt as he looks at his palm. It’s wet, something like water smearing across the lines carved into his skin. Sam rubs the back of his hand under his other eye to come to the same conclusion. He hadn’t even known that he’d been crying. Cursing quietly, Sam shakes the sleeve of his sweater over his knuckles so he can scrub it over his face and under his nose, sniffing all the while. Stupid. So fucking stupid.

At some point, he started walking again. He wouldn’t call it relief when he finally sees the back of Bobby’s cabin ahead of him, but he’s definitely thankful that he’s out of these damn woods. Sam lengthens his strides when he gets onto the field, the need to lie down and sleep really starting hit him hard. Once he reaches his cabin door, he toes off his shoes, holds them in the same hand as his coffee, and eases the door open with the minimal amount of creaking. Placing the cup gingerly into the trashcan by the foot of his bunk bed, Sam sets his shoes on the floor, shoves the covers over and climbs beneath them, his back turned to the rest of the cabin. There’s no movement to indicate he’s woken any of his cabin mates up, so he lets loose a shaky breath. It takes a while for his body heat and the blankets to work together enough to thaw him out, but he eventually gets warm again. There are weights tied to his eyelashes, dragging them down to envelop his world in black. He doesn’t dream.

Waking up again is like trying to swim to the surface of water without the use of his arms. It’s confusing to blink his eyes open to find his world rolling in front of him.

“Sam. _Sam_. Man, how deep of a sleeper are you?” a familiar voice says, and after a disorienting moment, Sam is able to place it as Charlie. The thing that is making Sam’s vision move so weirdly is Charlie’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him back and forth as he lies on his side.

“‘M up, I’m up,” Sam mumbles, batting lazily at his friend.

“It’s about time,” Charlie sighs. He sits down at the edge of Sam’s mattress as Sam raises himself onto one elbow and paws the sleep out of his eye with his other hand.

“What, couldn’t - couldn’t go to breakfast without me?” Sam is interrupted by a yawn halfway through teasing Charlie before he sits up fully.

“Breakfast?” Charlie snorts. “Dude, you’re about to miss _lunch_.”

Sam blinks slowly at Charlie, his eyes narrowing. “Lunch?”

“Yeah. I guess Bobby came in early and told Josh to let you sleep in but didn’t say why. Asked if I could hang around until you got up but I figured you’d want to eat.” The other boy bites the corner of his mouth before elbowing Sam gently. “You okay, dude? Need to talk or something?”

He can feel the heat start to bloom high in his cheeks, so Sam pushes at Charlie until he moves enough for Sam to swing his legs out of bed.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure? You weren’t here last night, either.”

“Seriously, Charlie, I’m good,” Sam snaps, guilt immediately flooding his chest when he sees Charlie’s face drop. Sighing, Sam drops his head into his hands. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m just - I just needed space is all. Bobby helped. It’s fine now.”

“Okay, dude. Whatever you say.” Charlie walks over to lean against the doorframe. “Dining hall is closing up lunch soon, though, so if you wanna eat then you should probably get going.”

The answering rumble of Sam’s stomach speaks for him. Charlie waits outside as Sam undresses and moodily kicks his sweater and sweatpants underneath his bag before changing into a new shirt and shorts. After hastily tying his feet back into his shoes, he meets Charlie and the two of them make their way to the dining hall. Sam gets there in time to steal a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and a small bowl of salad which is gone within minutes. They are shooed out by a plump, red-haired lady with a wooden spoon who says they need to start getting ready for dinner time, so they end up back out on the field, which Sam finally realizes is suspiciously empty.

“Where is everyone?” he asks, turning to Charlie, who nods over at the lake in response. As they walk over, the sounds of shouting and splashing becomes clearer as Sam takes in the sight before him. There are huge inflatables bobbing out on the surface of the water, ranging from a floating trampoline that requires short ladders to get onto it to a slide that resembles a tall triangle. There are donut tubes everywhere, some filled with kids lying across the middle of them and others using them as ways to move through the water. It’s all out chaos.

“Free swim,” Charlie explains. “It’s mostly for the younger kids but everyone usually goes in. The others who aren’t as into it go kayaking around the lake with a couple of counsellors.”

Sam casts a miserable look down at his clothes. “Guess it’s time to change again.”

Once they both have gotten into their swim trunks and t-shirts, Charlie leads them to a point in the field that could take them down the path to the boathouse or down to the docks.

“So?” Charlie asks, hands planted on his hips.

Sam eyes the path to his right, the one he walked not even twelve hours earlier, and that empty pit in his stomach stretches its claws out a little further.

“That inflatable trampoline looks pretty awesome right about now,” he says with a weak smile. He sees the doubt in Charlie’s eyes, how his brow furrows as he tries to figure out Sam. Honestly, Sam’s a bit tired of being looked at like he’s something to solve, so he leads the way, hopping as he tries to take off his shoes while still moving.

The wood of the dock is damp beneath his feet as he pads out to the end, no doubt from the campers and their splashing as they first made their way out deeper into the lake earlier that morning. Sam’s just started to pull his shirt over his head when he feels a hard shove to his ribs, a yelp leaving him in that suspended moment before he lands back-first in the lake. Fighting out of his shirt, Sam surfaces with a series of coughs to find Charlie grinning at him from the dock a few feet away.

“Cheap move, dude!” Sam yells, bundling his sopping wet shirt into a ball before throwing it at his friend’s head. He cheers when it connects with Charlie’s surprised face before thrashing wildly to get out of the way when Charlie runs forward and tucks in for a cannonball. The plume of water that erupts from the impact showers down on Sam’s head and he realizes that he’s laughing, something jarred loose in his chest from finally being pulled out of that painful place in his head.

There are more important things, Sam tells himself as he pushes a wave of water into Charlie’s face. Way more important things than being sad over stuff you can barely even explain to yourself. It was a fluke. More of an experiment, really. So, yeah, Sam’s hypothesis was wrong. He hadn’t accounted for certain variables. It’s fine. He just needed to forget about it. There’s no time like the present or whatever.

He can’t really stay wrapped up in his thoughts much longer once Charlie plants both hands on Sam’s shoulders and shoves him underwater, so Sam lets it go. After a few more minutes of trying unsuccessfully to drown one another, the two of them take a break and leisurely swim over to the other campers. Sam pops up into the center of a floating donut and heaves himself up until his legs are dangling off the side and his head is lolling over his shoulders. He looks around as he catches his breath, smiling at a shrieking Dominic that is plummeting down the slide and into the water. There is a group of kids off to the side who are playing water polo, and in the distance, he can see the group of kayakers that Charlie mentioned before circling back around to camp, their oars making them look like low flying birds on the surface of the water.

Speaking of, he feels his legs dip down as Charlie gets his hands on Sam’s tube and hangs there, panting.

“Trampoline?”

Sam coughs and slaps his chest with a tired grin. “I still need a minute. You _did_ make me drink half the lake, y’know.”

Charlie waves him away before releasing the tube, swimming backwards as he speaks. “Yeah, yeah, I plead the fifth. I’ll be over there. Doing flips. Having fun. While you sit there like a loser.”

Sam kicks water at him to make him shut up. With a sigh through his nose, Sam tips his head back and closes his eyes. The sun is sitting high overhead, bright with heat. Sam could probably count every individual drop of water sitting on or sliding down his skin, leaving a ticklish trail behind. All he can see is the reds of his eyelids and the blurry lines that crisscross underneath them. He makes an effort to keep his mind blank, focusing on the gentle sway of the lake rocking him with the occasional spattering of water when someone swims past or jumps in nearby.

The heat of the sun and the mindless noise of laughter in the background somehow make the perfect soundtrack for Sam to doze off to, his muscles relaxing into the cradle of his tube. He doesn’t dream, barely sleeps, really, but it’s comforting to have this feeling of being suspended, even with his feet ankle-deep in the water lapping at his legs.

It’s disorienting, to say the least, after a good twenty minutes of this serene state to feel everything change, his body suddenly tilting down at a precarious angle. Sam flails out, shouting as he shifts his weight to try and stop his tube from flipping over. Whatever is making his tube tip up disappears, resulting in an overbalance that sends Sam over the side and into the lake.

Breaking the surface with a splutter, Sam swipes his hair out of his eyes before kicking forward to latch onto the tube before it can float away. Knuckling hard at his left eye, Sam turn to see the bright red siding of a kayak bobbing right in front of him. A cold laugh draws Sam’s gaze up further to find Parker sitting there, some big, stupid grin on his face.

“How’s the water there, Sammy boy?” the counsellor cooes as he leans forward, the long length of his paddle resting across his lap. The taunt is evident in the easy smirk of Parker’s mouth, in the way he so clearly enjoys looking _down_ on Sam like he deserves to be nothing more than dirt under Parker’s shoe.

Sam feels his cheeks flood white-hot, even reaching the tips of his ears as the thought settles in. This day has already gone to shit, and Sam was just starting to forget about the dark, jumbled vice it has left around his stomach when this dickhead had to come knock him back into reality. So maybe he’s a little pissed when he reaches out a hand to shove angrily at the body of the kayak with a sharp, “Fuck off, man” leaving his mouth at the same time.

“Hey, heyyyy,” Parker drawls, dipping one end of his paddle in the water to swing himself back towards Sam. “You didn’t answer my question!”

“Sorry, I don’t speak ‘asshole’,” Sam bites back with a glare. “Go find someone who’s fluent. Seems there’s no shortage around here.”

Watching Parker’s face perk up in interest makes Sam realize his slip and he jerks his head away to stare at the floating trampoline where he can see Charlie hanging off one of the ladders, oblivious to Sam’s predicament.

“Poor, sad Sam. Get in a fight with one of your little friends, did we?”

Sam releases the tube, shoving it in Parker’s general direction as a distraction in favor of beginning to swim his way towards the rest of the campers, cursing himself for dozing off and letting himself float away from the group as a result. He just needs to get closer to other people. That way, if he ends up strangling the guy in his stupid little boat, he’ll have witnesses to testify that it was self-defense against douchebaggery.

“Hey!” The word is piercing, no trace of cruel humor this time. Just barely concealed rage bubbling underneath the single syllable. Sam keeps swimming.

The thwap of the plastic wings meeting water fills Sam’s ears right before he sees one come down right in front of his face. Lurching back with a gasp, Sam feels the paddle slap his sternum hard from both his momentum and the force Parker put behind it. The breath is knocked clean out of his chest and a harsh buzzing fills his ears as he tries to remember how to make his lungs restart while working his arms to keep himself afloat.

He can just barely hear Parker stutter, “Shit, man, I-”, before Sam grasps the handle of the paddle and yanks it free from Parker’s hands, swinging his arm wide as he whips it a couple yards away.

“What the fuck is your _problem_ with me?” Sam yells hoarsely as he plants both hands on the kayak and pushes it again, a deep satisfaction curling in his gut as he watches it tilt wildly to one side before balancing once more.

“Dude, it was an accident!” Parker snaps back, hands white-knuckling the lip of the cockpit.

“No it fucking wasn’t.” Sam can feel the throb of the spot on his chest. Every swell of the disturbed water around them that hits his skin is a reminder, a deep well of fuel for him to dig into to get back at Parker for being so completely unbearable.

The sun is behind Sam’s head but catches on Parker’s face in just the right way so he can see the way the guy’s eyebrows draw up into something resembling genuine regret.

“Seriously, I just-” The muscles in Parker’s jaw tick as he fights with his words. Finally he spits them out. “I was just trying to stop you, that’s all.”

The asshole almost sounds sorry. For Sam, that flips the switch. After all the shit Parker has pulled in the past week, the fact that he’s now trying to pull the sympathy card sends flames crawling up his throat to sit hot on his tongue. Opening his mouth, Sam sucks in a breath to ready himself for what’s about to leave him in one huge rush until a voice stops him.

“Heads up!” echoes in Sam’s ears right before the paddle he had thrown aside soars right over the top of his head and into Parker’s chest. The guy winces and flails for a second before he fits it into his hands properly, eyes narrowing as they look off to a place behind Sam that he can’t see.

Using his arms and legs to turn himself around, Sam sees another kayaker pulling up to the two of them, but the sun stops him from making out the features of their face. It isn’t until the person’s head obscures the light that Sam can blink away the spots racing across his vision and see that it is Dean floating in front of him. He really thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

“Everything okay over here?” Sam hears Dean ask lightly, but there’s clearly a separate tone hiding beneath his words, something like a warning in the casual way he speaks.

“Fan-friggin’-tastic,” he mutters as he spins until he’s not facing either one of the counsellors. He’s too pissed off and tired, wincing at the ache starting to creep into his muscles from treading so long.

“We’re fine, Winchester. Just had a little misunderstanding, that’s all.” Parker’s voice overlaps his own, making a play at consoling. Sam knows that Dean will see right through it, cursing himself silently that he still cares enough to take notice of something like that.

There’s a weighted pause, and then his name wrapped up in something too gentle to coincide with the way everything ended earlier this morning: “...Sam? You okay?”

Sam whirls himself around in the water, eyes wild as they fly between the two counsellors. “Can you both just _leave me alone_?”

He refuses to look at the hurt fluttering across Dean’s face so he pushes forward, elbowing the front of Parker’s kayak out of his way to be able to turn and start to head back to the docks. He can only imagine what this looks like to anyone else, him being the spastic new kid who does nothing but have major issues with anyone who comes within a five feet radius of him. Fighting against the heaviness in his limbs, Sam puts his face in the water and just swims, tries to use his measured breaths and the kick of his legs to drown out the thoughts prying themselves into his brain to no avail.

Dean shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t even have the _right_ to care after what he did. Sam had never felt so vulnerable before, never bared his heart so freely in the palms of his hands until he was sitting on that bench and breathing Dean’s air as easily as if it had been the source of his oxygen for his entire life. He was just as confused, just as lost in all of this, and Dean had shut him down. Made him feel like somehow this was Sam’s fault. The way Dean said those three words, _I’m not gay_ , like it could somehow wipe away the memory of his mouth pressing into Sam’s collarbone or the feel of his teeth catching Sam’s bottom lip. He was sure as fuck _something_ , just like Sam was. That much he knows for sure. It doesn’t mean that Sam knows exactly what that something is, but it isn’t fair the way Dean ended the moment after everything that happened. It just isn’t.

He stops swimming when he gets to the end of the dock since it’s shallow enough that he can stand up. Chest heaving, he starts to trudge up along the side of the dock, feels the sand part beneath his feet as he reaches up to grab the wet ball of his earlier discarded shirt along the way.

“Sam!”

Against his better judgment, he stops this time. Doesn’t turn around, but he stops.

“Can you just-“ Dean’s voice is low and hoarse, echoing off the surface of the water up to Sam’s ears, but he doesn’t finish his sentence.

Wiping his hair back from his face as he looks over his shoulder, Sam meets Dean’s eyes. He’s a few feet away, just floating with his paddle sitting across his lap. Dean looks wary and confused and something else Sam can’t place. He almost wants to laugh at the contrast between the look on Dean’s face and the bright blue kayak he’s sitting in. It’s too cheerful for the storm cloud of emotions filtering across Dean’s cheeks, each feeling bouncing between the freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose before swooping to pull his full lips down into a frown.

Slowly, Sam shakes his head, his heart plummeting as he hears his voice tremble. “Haven’t you done enough, man?”

Dean’s head snaps back as if Sam had just slapped him. It hurts too much to look at him, so for the second time that day, Sam is the one to walk away.

Later, when Sam is lying face down in his pillow with his arms wrapped around his head, he’ll hear the deep roar of a car engine starting and the following purr that soon fades away to the back of his mind. Later, he’ll find that Dean isn’t at dining hall for lunch, nor is he at the nightly bonfire. Or at breakfast the following day. Or any meals, activities or sports that unfold in the next week. It’s only then that it hits Sam like a blow to the head, leaving his world tilting on an angle with the edges all blurred.

Dean is gone, and Sam doesn’t know if he’s going to come back.


End file.
